_The Church of Saint-Maximin_
So persuasive was M. Rostan that when I had read his account of all
this, sitting in front of the fire at my inn, within a stone's throw of
the great church that had been the scene of so many strange and moving
happenings, it is small wonder that I was inclined to believe at least
a good half of it. It was my first introduction to the legend, which
was to colour so much of my future wanderings, and many of the facts
that I have given were unknown to me then. I thought, at least, that
the main facts vouching for its truth went much farther back than they
seem to, and if it was difficult to accept quite that galaxy of New
Testament names, or the story of the miraculous voyage, still I thought
there might be some truth in the tradition as attaching to some of them.
What emerges as indisputable fact, and what moved me at the time, is
that through some centuries countless people did believe in every word
of it, and thronged this little town where I was resting from all parts
of the then known world. And there in the church which I was to see on
the morrow was--no doubt about this either--the very thing that had
brought them here--princes and prelates, hard soldiers and lawyers, men
and women of every degree, making journeys, some of them, of immense
difficulty just for the sake of beholding what I or any other traveller
coming into a dull little town could see for a few sous before passing
on our way. Or would not even take the trouble to see. A man with whom
I had talked at dinner came to Saint-Maximin several times in the year
and had never seen it. He was '_bon Catholique_,' too, and said that
there was no doubt at all that it was the head of St. Mary Magdalene
they had in the church there. Some day he would go and see it, but not
to-morrow, for he was too busy.
You may put your finger on strange gaps in such a story; you may find
the first foundations upon which it rests too weak to bear it; parts of
it you may refuse altogether to believe. But make what deductions you
wish, and what a lot remains.
_Some_ poor tired body was laid to rest in the soil from which this
great church has sprung at a time when there were still alive those who
had walked and talked with Our Lord; and it was the body of one who
was venerated. Out of the dusk of successive centuries come gleams of
light that show innumerable people, who differed not so greatly from
ourselves, believing that the remains they had knowledge of were those
that their forbears had held in honour from the beginning. It becomes
hardly more difficult to believe that they were than that they were not.
Say that there has been error, say that there has been fraud if you
like, and what have you denied? Nothing in the way of strong and moving
power over those who have believed. There is the church, to which men
whose names stand out in history made successive gifts through two
centuries and a half, until it stood the splendid monument that it is
today. There is the dust that countless pilgrims' feet have trodden
for two centuries past. There is the echo of prayers and hymns, sighs
from burdened hearts and praise from lightened ones that have gone up
through ages from this place. The Revolution, which was to sweep away
all error and superstition, might despise these sanctities, and scatter
the venerated human dust, but it could not destroy the least particle
of the faith that had been. It did not move the iconoclasts, but it had
moved the world, and its effects remain in spite of them.
The wind had blown itself out the next morning and the air was cold,
but sunny and still, as I paid my early visit to the church.
Its beauty is compelling, and when I had walked round it I sat down
and tried to find out for myself in what it consists.
The first impression is one of austere simplicity. There are a nave and
two aisles, with chapels, no transepts, and except for the Renaissance
work about the choir and the altar, and the fine pulpit, scarcely
any decoration. Rows of clustered pillars carry arches between the
nave and the aisles; and between the arches spring from the floor
itself successive groups of three very slender pillars, like rods of
stone attached to the wall, which run up uninterrupted far above the
arcading, until from a simple moulding spring the delicate ribs of
the vaulting, all as light as if it were a roof of leaves held up by
slim tree-trunks. The sense of lightness is wonderful, gained as it is
without the slightest disguise of the solid masonry, by sculpture or
other suggestion; and the wonder increases when one remembers that this
is not the work of one architectural genius, but the flower of many
successive periods of building. It is clean and strong and beautiful, a
church with a true religious significance.
The choir contains some very fine wood-carving and metal-work of the
seventeenth century, and above the gilt and jasper of the high altar is
a rich device of almost life-size angels and cherubs, surrounding and
enclosing a little oval window on which the Holy Dove is emblazoned.
The morning sun, shining through this window, made a striking effect,
though it is perhaps at variance with the pure dignity of the church
itself. The celestial figures are wrought with a gay and delightful
luxuriance of imagination. They overflow from the main composition with
its sweep and spread of angels' wings; delicious cherubic forms perch
on the marble of the reredos, on the carved frames of the medallions
which it encloses, on the rich screens of the choir itself; and each of
them has its own attitude of devotion, or interest, or expectation, or
even curiosity.[5]
The inspiration of the Gothic had begun to die away when the fabric of
the church had come near to completion. We may perhaps be thankful that
it was never quite finished, for it has such perfection of life as it
stands: life that sprang from an impulse lasting through centuries. No
such impulse exists now. It is safe to say that the most understanding
and sympathetic architecture would seem like a dead thing if it were
sought to complete what was left undone.
The church lovers of the Renaissance made no such mistake. Their work
was alive, too, and they spent their inspiration not on the beautiful
fabric of the church but on its rich furnishing. What they wrought is
as far away from us as the work of the Gothic builders was from them,
and it is almost as unapproachable.
The iconoclasts of the Revolution wreaked their devastating zeal upon
this Gloria, and upon any symbol or figure in the rich carvings of the
choir that spoke of power or privilege. The church itself they spared,
though you may see a device of _fleur de lys_ on a boss of the roof
vaulting spitefully disfigured by bullets.
What was it that they hated so? The arrogance of a church that had
allied itself too much with the rich and powerful and worked on
superstitions of mankind to gain riches and power and glory to itself,
when there was so much wretchedness all around that it made small
attempts to cope with? They would have said so, and to imagine them
possessed only by the spirit of wickedness would be to make the same
mistake about them as they made about the Church. In that dark hour
the Church reaped the reward of its virtues at the same time as it
paid for its sins. To the extent that it had been faithful those who
had drawn comfort and consolation from it came to its aid; and if
the fury of its attackers had been ten times as great they could not
have stamped out the life that persisted through all the years of
destruction; and flowered again profusely when the poor substitutes
that had been planted in its place had wilted away. Religion could
have done everything to heal the wrongs that had been suffered by the
people who were now rising up to take the redress of wrongs into their
own hands; and religion had done very little. It had been chiefly on
the side of the oppressors, not of the oppressed. At its best it had
given consolation in trouble that it had not sought to remove, at its
worst it had committed crimes unspeakable. No wonder that a blind,
insensate fury against the outward tokens of such a system seized those
who thought that they had a mission to remove all oppression from
the world. The buildings that enshrined it they could put to other
uses, and the churches themselves were spared. But sacred relics they
scattered to the dust with bitter contempt, and the treasures of art
which spoke of an impotent faith that they despised, they destroyed or
mutilated.
One of the minor glories of Saint-Maximin is the Altar of the
Crucifixion, or the _Corpus Domini_, at the end of the north aisle.
The high reredos, with gilded columns and pilasters, frames two large
paintings and a series of sixteen smaller ones on wood, which are of
the utmost interest. It has only comparatively lately become known
that these are the work of a Venetian painter of the early sixteenth
century, Antonio Ronzen, who stayed at Saint-Maximin two years and a
half to execute them, together with the reredos itself.
[Illustration: ALTAR OF THE CRUCIFIXION, SAINT-MAXIMIN]
[Illustration: THE FIELD OF THE GREAT BATTLE, WITH MOUNT OLYMPUS IN THE
BACKGROUND
_Page 94_]
Though Ronzen came into Provence from Venice, it seems unlikely that
he was an Italian. His name is Dutch, and so is his style of painting;
and a striking resemblance has been pointed out between one of these
paintings and an engraving of the same subject executed by Lucas van
Leyden ten years before. Wherever he came from, Ronzen was a great
artist, and left behind him at Saint-Maximin a great treasure.
The sixteen panels are of different scenes in the Passion. The light
was not good when I was in the church, and some of them are too high to
be seen easily; but most of them are wonderfully fresh and vivid and
suggestive, crowded with figures, and creating that sense of intimacy
which has always been the mark of the Dutch school. Each of the scenes
is set in a characteristic landscape. You can pick out the Ducal Palace
at Venice, the Palace of the Popes at Avignon, the Coliseum; and the
figures include all the types of the period, from the aristocrat to
the peasant. Many of them, no doubt, are portraits of people very well
known in their time, who came in and out of the church, or wherever the
artist did his work, to see how he was getting on, and had a great deal
to say about the painting and about the magnificent present that the
Seigneur de Semblançay was making to the church, and what a fortunate
thing it was that so clever an artist had been available to undertake
the commission. Perhaps they used a little flattery, so that he should
offer to "put them in."
He was an important person, this Jacques de Beaune, Seigneur de
Semblançay. He was superintendent of the finances of Francis I, whose
finances wanted a good deal of looking after, and lived at this time
chiefly in Paris. But previously he had been Treasurer-General of
Provence, and it might have been well for him if he had stayed in his
own country. For he fell into disgrace, and was put to death seven
years after Ronzen had finished the pictures he had ordered from him.
Probably he found time, during the period from the end of 1517 to July,
1520, when Ronzen was at Saint-Maximin, to pay him a few visits and
see how he was progressing. According to the custom of the time his
portrait would almost certainly have been included among the figures
that still appear so lifelike after five hundred years, and remains
there, if we could only tell which of them all it is. Did he have
any premonition or dread of the fate that was hanging over him, and
did the people who were taking such a lively interest in the work he
was inaugurating think of him as having attained to the pinnacle of
success, and much to be envied in comparison with themselves, living
humdrum lives in their beautiful Provence?
Saint-Maximin has a fine Sacristy, furnished with presses and panelling
of beautifully carved walnut, of the seventeenth century. Before the
Revolution it contained many rich treasures, gold cups and chalices,
silver reliquaries, ornaments jewelled and enamelled. Kings and
Sovereign Pontiffs had showered gifts upon it; but in 1793 everything
was rifled.
"Barras and Fréron came to carry out the spoliation. Barras presented
himself to the Popular Assembly to announce his mission, and a simple
peasant, Jean Saurin, who died in 1842, Member of the Club, alone rose
before the representative of the Convention to protest against the
act of vandalism. He spoke honourably and with energy, but without
success: the church was despoiled. Some rare and precious fragments,
however, were saved from the wreck by the care and devotion of the
sub-sacristan, Joseph Bastide, whose name deserves to be held in
grateful memory by archæologists; for besides the sacred bones that
the Church of Saint-Maximin can still offer, thanks to him, to public
veneration, he was able to withdraw from the revolutionary spoliation
a few rich ornaments, some ancient reliquaries, and a textile specimen
of great value, the cope of St. Louis d'Anjou, Bishop of Toulouse.
This cope, of the end of the thirteenth century, left by the holy
bishop to the convent founded by his father, is one of the most
beautiful and curious ornaments of the period."
Thus M. Rostan, who proceeds to describe it. But alas! it is no longer
there. The sacristan, worthy descendant of the pious Joseph Bastide,
told me the sad story after he had made me admire the beautiful
woodwork and shown me how the long drawers in the presses that held the
vestments drew in and out, as if they had been made yesterday instead
of two hundred and fifty years ago.
He had taken such care of the treasures under his charge, locking up
everything whenever he left the church, and seeing that all was fast
when he went home for the night. And often he would look out of his
window, in the little ancient house in which he lived hard by, to
satisfy himself that no marauders were about.
But ten years ago--how well he remembered it--the marauders had come.
He pointed to the iron-barred window through which they had made their
entry. They had taken I forget what from the sacristy, but not the
precious cope. I think he rather wished they had. Then they had broken
into the church and into the crypt, and from there they had stolen the
Holy Ampulla.
"This name is given," wrote M. Rostan, some years before the theft,
"to a tube of crystal bearing the characters of the fourteenth century,
and containing little fragments of glass, the remains of a phial still
more ancient, which enclosed, according to tradition, some of the
precious blood of the Saviour, collected by St. Mary Magdalene on Mount
Calvary, brought by her to our country and discovered with the remains
of this illustrious penitent."
The thieves had broken into the iron-protected case in which this relic
was kept, together with the skull of the saint in its rich and heavy
reliquary, and a bone from the arm. They had stolen the bone, too, but
had left the chief treasure intact, possibly because it was too heavy
and bulky to bear away with safety.
What was the meaning of this strange crime? As far as I understand
what happened, the breaking in was difficult, and nothing of great
intrinsic value was taken, though many things might have been. Much
money, certainly, would be paid for such relics as were stolen, if
they could have been bought openly; but if the fact that they had been
stolen would have to be disclosed, as it would in order to attach even
a damaged authenticity to them, of what value were they to anybody?
Protestant zeal, which sometimes indulges itself in a similar way
in England, may be ruled out. In France it does not act with those
impulsions, and in any case destruction or contemptuous mutilation
would be its object rather than theft, and I think the people who
had done the damage would be rather inclined to advertise it, and
themselves. The sacred skull was not damaged.
Is it not forced upon one to believe that their value to the thief, or
to those who may have encouraged the theft, was precisely that which
they had always had; which was not represented by money at all?
"If our tradition is well-founded," wrote M. Rostan, "the _Sainte
Ampoule_ is evidently the most precious relic of the Church of
Saint-Maximin. It has enjoyed wide celebrity throughout centuries, and
frequent miracles have been attributed to it. On Good Friday, after the
reading of the Passion, the traces of the divine blood were seen to
liquefy, to rise and fall, bubbling, and to fill the whole phial. It
was called the 'holy miracle.' A great crowd of pilgrims came each year
to witness it."
Where is the relic hidden now? Does the thief who risked so much to
possess it cherish it in secret, with his sin on his conscience,
but hoping from its possession one knows not what in the way of
preservation or blessing? Or is it hidden fearfully in some church--a
priceless treasure that may never be displayed, but may be expected,
by its secret presence, to sanctify its resting-place above other
places? Do those who hold it still watch with strained attention on
Good Fridays for the "holy miracle" to be performed? Do they perhaps
persuade themselves that they see it, as many others must have done
before them? For even M. Rostan, good and believing Catholic that he
is, does not assert that the liquefaction has been plain to see within
living memory.
I asked the sacristan whether the theft had been held to be the work of
religious enthusiasts, but either he misunderstood me or his grievance
overshadowed all such questions.
They had taken the wonderful cope out of his care. It was a unique
specimen of thirteenth century needlework, and is now in safe keeping
in Paris. After so many years they might have trusted him to look after
it, he said, ignoring the fact that his care had proved unequal to the
preservation of relics still more valuable, at least in the eyes of the
Church. The Ministry of Fine Arts, or whatever authority had deprived
Saint-Maximin of the cope, had been quite content that it should keep
the sacred skull, showing some cynicism, it may be thought, as well as
indulgence.
With much unlocking of iron grilles and doors, we descended into the
crypt, the storied place that has seen so much during centuries past,
where kings and popes have bent the knee, and before which so many
princes and nobles have put off their arms.
It is almost square--a vaulted chamber about fourteen feet wide and a
little longer, with an apse containing the altar, behind which is the
reliquary enclosing the skull. The staircase leading down to it, and
the side walls of the crypt itself, have been decorated with marble,
comparatively recently, but the form of the chamber remains much as it
always has been.
The sacred tombs, heavily carved with Biblical subjects, in the manner
of the fourth century, are ranged on either side. They are said to be
those of St. Maximin, St. Marcelle, St. Susan, St. Sidonius, and St.
Mary Magdalene herself. They have been a good deal mutilated "by the
piety of pilgrims," and in some degree made up, for the covers do not
always belong to the sarcophagi on which they are fixed, or indeed to
any other here.
The head of the Magdalen is contained in an elaborate gilt reliquary
of the year 1860, of small artistic value. Under a heavy canopy four
angels hold up a hollow metal bust with flowing hair, into which the
head has been fitted.
What can one say of it? The sacristan pointed out to me the _noli me
tangere_ on the forehead, and I tried hard but could not distinguish
it, though he said that it was quite plain to him. He was a believer,
and I, frankly, was not, although the great antiquity of the relic and
its stirring history aroused at least an endeavour to put myself in the
mood of one who believed. But he, the believer, made it all appear so
commonplace, holding up his stump of a candle here and there to exhibit
a great curiosity, but showing no sign either in manner or speech of
being moved to veneration or awe, or to any feeling outside those
attaching to his customary occupation, that it is little wonder that I
was scarcely able to produce any emotion at all.
One asks oneself many questions. Are not all the signs and wonders
wrought by such relics as these a matter of self-deception, induced by
crowds and movement and the atmosphere of enthusiasm? Or, in the rare
instances in which they have been experienced by one alone, arising
out of some state of ecstasy, hardly to be accepted as convincing
testimony? If not, then how vaguely and arbitrarily these occult powers
work! Faced by a known, even if half understood, power of nature, one
knows the power to be there, and it will be felt beyond question if
contact is made with it. Here, with a supposed spiritual power, there
is only deadness of spirit, even with those who have the faith.
With one's facile modern venerations one is inclined to shudder at the
iconoclasm of the Revolutionists, who laid rude hands on such objects
as this. But may they not have been right after all? Long periods of
deadness of spirit are a heavy price to pay for an occasional and
questionable exhibition of arbitrary activity. And there are spiritual
powers that do react to an exercise of faith, neither occasionally nor
questionably, nor arbitrarily, which belief in tangible sanctities
tends to obscure.
We locked and barred the grilles and doors and came up into the
sunlight, leaving the much venerated relic to keep its watch in the
dark crypt. With whatever lack of emotion it may be faced now, even by
a believer, there has been no lack of it in the long past. And whatever
view you may take of it, it is the seed from which sprang this strong
and beautiful church.