_The Palace of the Popes_
"No one who did not see Avignon in the time of the Popes has seen
anything. For gaiety, life, animation and one fête after the other,
there was never a town like it. From morning till night there were
processions, pilgrimages, streets strewn with flowers and hung with
stuffs, disembarkings of cardinals from the Rhône, banners flying,
galleys gay with flags, the soldiers of the Pope singing Latin in the
squares, the begging friars swinging their rattles. And from top to
bottom of the houses that pressed humming round the great papal palace,
like bees round their hive, there was the _tic-tac_ of the lace-makers'
bobbins, the flying shuttles that wove cloth of gold for the chasubles,
the little hammers of the metal-workers who made the chalices, the
sound-boards being adjusted by the lute-makers, the songs sung over
the looms; and above it all the pealing of the bells, and always the
beating of tambourines down by the bridge. For with us, when people
are happy they must dance, they must dance; and as in those times the
streets of the town were too narrow for the _farandole_, fifes and
tambourines posted themselves _sur le pont d'Avignon_, in the fresh
air of the Rhône, and day and night _l'on y dansait, l'on y dansait_.
"Ah, happy time! happy town! Halberds without an edge; state prisons in
which wine was kept to cool! Never any scarcity; never any fighting!
That was how the Popes of the Comtat knew how to rule their people; and
that is why their people have missed them so much."
Thus Alphonse Daudet, a true son of Provence, draws his picture of
papal Avignon, in that delicious story of his, "La Mule du Pape." As
for the freedom of Avignon from war, during the seventy years that the
Popes had their seat there, history would hardly justify the people
of Avignon in regretting them on that account; nor probably were the
dungeons of the papal palace lacking in tenants even at the best of
times, for it was a cruel age, and the pleasures of the best of Popes
would not have been greatly disturbed by the thought of men rotting in
misery beneath the hall in which he was feasting. But the experience
of all times of strife is that life goes on side by side with fear and
danger, and merrily enough when the weight is lifted ever so little.
Very likely Daudet's picture of Avignon enjoying itself is true enough.
Clement VI, to whose time his story would refer, if it were intended
to refer to any particular pontificate, was not much like the kindly
old man who fed his mule with spiced wine, and advanced the adventurer
who admired her, but neither was he like what a Pope would have to be
nowadays.
"Generous and open-handed," writes Mr. Okey, "a thousand hungry
clerics are said to have crowded into Avignon seeking preferment,
none of whom went empty away; for no suitor should leave a prince's
court, said he, unsatisfied. Exquisitely polite and courteous, Clement
had a gracious amenity of manner. Accustomed to the society of noble
ladies, his court was crowded with fair dames and gallant knights;
his stables were filled with beautiful horses; his hospitality was
regal and his table loaded with rich viands and rare wines. The fair
Countess of Turenne, his constant companion, disposed of benefices
and preferments, and her favour was the surest avenue to fortune. No
sovereign of his time kept so brilliant and expensive a court, and
when one of the cardinals remonstrated and recalled the examples of
Benedict and John, he replied magnificently: 'Ah! my predecessors
never knew how to be a pope.' Clement relaxed the rigid constitution
of Gregory X, _Ubi magis_, for the government of conclaves, made in
1274, and ordered that the cardinals might have curtains to their
cells, to be drawn when they rested or slept; they might have two
servants, lay or cleric, as they pleased, and after the lapse of three
days, in addition to their bread and wine, they might have fruit,
cheese, and an electuary, and one dish of meat or fish at dinner, and
another at supper."[15]
It was in 1309, for reasons that we need not go into, that Clement V
set up his court at Avignon in the papal county of Venaissan. "This was
a man," wrote Villani, "most greedy for money and a simoniac. Every
benefice was sold in his court for money, and he was so lustful that
he openly kept a most beautiful woman, the Countess of Perigord, for
his mistress." But he was also a great lover of the arts, as is shown
by "the vast treasure of gold and silver vessels, gems, antiques and
manuscripts seized by his nephew at his death." He died five years
later, when there was an interregnum for two years. Then the Bishop of
Avignon was elected Pope under the title of John XXII.
He was a small, wiry, learned and subtle old man of seventy-one, the
son of a cobbler, and he lived to be nearly ninety. The conclave took
place at Lyons, and he is said to have compassed his election by a
promise to the Roman cardinals that he would not mount horse or mule
except to go to Rome. So he got into a boat, and dropped down the
Rhône to Avignon, "entered the papal palace on foot, and never left it
again save to cross to the cathedral."[16]
His palace was the old bishop's palace that stood where the mighty
mass of the Pope's Palace stands now, but the cathedral was the same,
although it has been very much altered.
It stands very nobly, high above the _place_, and towering above the
palace itself, which it adjoins. Its square tower is surmounted by a
colossal gilt statue of the Virgin, which was put there in 1859, and
bears that appearance. The cathedral dates from the eleventh century,
but was rebuilt in the twelfth. The west porch with its Corinthian
architecture was long thought to be of Roman construction, but it was
probably erected rather later than the first rebuildings, and owes its
classical appearance to the influence that Roman work had upon the
Provençal architects, who had before them many fine buildings to study.
It was once decorated with frescoes by Simone Memmi, who was brought
to Avignon from Siena in the fourteenth century and did some beautiful
work there, some of which we shall see later in the Popes' Palace. His
paintings in the cathedral have unfortunately disappeared, all but
a few fragments, which, however, include a figure in a green gown,
kneeling, which is said to be a portrait of Petrarch's Laura. Simone
did meet Laura in Avignon and painted her portrait, for which Petrarch
paid him in two sonnets that "brought more fame to the poor life of
Master Simone," says Vasari, "than all his works have brought him or
will bring."
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, AVIGNON]
[Illustration: "THE POPES' PALACE IS MOST LIKE THOSE ALMOST BRUTALLY
STRONG BUILDINGS THAT THE ROMANS LEFT"]
The great west doors of the cathedral stand open, and its floor is
wholly bare. It is much more effective so, but it makes the church look
smaller than it is. Indeed, when you consider that you are standing in
what was, during the seventy years of the "Babylonian Captivity," the
first church in Christendom, you must be struck by its smallness. But
the Popes of Avignon gave most of their attention to their palace, and
not much was done for the cathedral.
The main plan is a high nave, lighted, from an octagonal lantern in the
last bay, and a semi-circular apse. The chapels came later. So did the
elaborately carved marble gallery and tribunes on either side of the
nave.
One of the two chapels first to be built contains the remains of the
beautiful tomb of Pope John XXII and his nephew. It has been much
mutilated and much restored. The recumbent figure is not that of the
Pope whose effigy first lay there, and of the sixty marble statues that
adorned its niches none remain, though it is possible that one or two
of those on the pulpit of St. Pierre, which we have already seen, may
have been taken from the tomb. It must have been a glorious monument
when it was first erected, and is even now a thing to see. What is
called the tomb of Benedict XII in another chapel is a pure "make-up,"
much of it of the nineteenth century. There _was_ a beautiful monument
to this great pope, but in the eighteenth century all that was left of
it was moved. It stood in the chapel of the Tailors' Guild, and they
wanted the space for a monument to a tailor.
The Revolution created great havoc in the cathedral. The cloisters and
chapter-house that stood to the east of it were swept away, and all
their treasures and those of the cathedral looted, or else broken up.
For some reason the old papal throne was spared, and stands in the
choir--a plain chair of white marble, with the lion of St. Mark and the
ox of St. Luke carved upon it.
It was John XXII who really fixed upon Avignon as the papal
city--Clement V had thought of transferring his seat to Bordeaux--and
he soon set about housing himself in a manner worthy of a pope.
He bought land, and began to build splendidly, not only a palace
for himself, but one for his nephew, who had been presented with
the bishopric. It still stands on the north side of the _place_, a
comfortable and roomy house enough, though nothing beside the vast
pile upon which it looks. He also built himself splendid country
houses, one of them at Châteauneuf, where were the famous papal
vineyards, and from which still comes a famous wine.
Experts have pointed out some traces of Pope John's work, as well as
of the small palace which he replaced; but the great fortified pile
in which these were incorporated dates from the next reign--that of
Benedict XII. The necessity there was for building a fortress is rather
curious. Pope John had amassed a treasure so vast that his successor
had to take exceptional steps to guard it.
"According to Villani--who makes the statement on the authority of his
brother, who was the representative at Avignon of the great Florentine
banking house of the Bardi, of which they were members--eighteen
millions of gold florins were found in the papal treasury at John's
death; and gold and silver vessels, crosses, mitres, jewels and
precious stones to the value of seven millions more. And this
prodigious wealth, adds the historian, was amassed by his industry
and sagacity and the system of the reservation of all the collegiate
benefices in Christendom on the plea of preventing simony."[17]
Mr. Okey goes into an elaborate and interesting discussion as to the
present-day value of this vast sum, and puts "the approximate value of
the papal treasure at John's death, according to Villani's statement,
at the incredible figure of one hundred million pounds sterling." No
wonder the walls of the palace were built to stand!
Benedict XII was the third French Pope, and in spite of remonstrances
decided to stay on at Avignon. Indeed, Rome was impossible at this
time. Civil strife raged there; and "so neglected and ruinous and
overgrown with weeds were the churches, that cattle browsed up to the
altars in St. Peter's and the Lateran, and a papal legate offered the
marbles of the Coliseum for lime-burning."
Sometimes, in all that welter of crime and piety, squalor and luxury,
cruelty and sentiment, of the Middle Ages, there stands out the figure
of a man whom we seem to recognize as something nearer to ourselves
than most of them. Our religion--even the religion of Catholic
countries--is so different in spirit from the religion of those days
that it is difficult to account for the actions of one after another of
the great churchmen, except under the supposition that they were a set
of greedy, bloodthirsty hypocrites, which probably most of them were
not. But through it all there were constantly arising men and women
who were actuated by much the same ideas as we should recognize as holy
and righteous if we contemplated them in a living person. The greatest
of these saints, we know, helped to fix the standard of goodness that
is generally held today. They were men and women of genius, and we
understand them as well as they were understood in their own day or
perhaps better.
But it is something a good deal less than genius that brings that sense
of recognition in the case of a character like that of Benedict XII.
He was a large, red-faced man, who was said by his detractors to love
coarse jokes and to drink heavily; but his detractors were the clergy
from whom he insisted upon behaviour much more in accordance with
modern ideas than with those of his own age, and they could not forgive
him. "He was a man," wrote one of them, "hard, obstinate, avaricious;
he loved the good overmuch, and hated the bad; he was remiss in
granting favours, and negligent in providing for the services of the
church; more addicted to unseemly jests than to honest conversation;
he was a mighty toper, and '_Bibamus papaliter_--let us drink like a
pope'--became a proverb of the day."
The indictment contains more than a touch of spite. It is not to be
supposed that a man who drank mightily, if he really did so, or laughed
at a broad story, would have been thought deserving of much censure in
those days, especially by one who felt no incongruity in accusing him
of loving the good overmuch or setting his face against nepotism. Those
were virtues that were hated in that society, so crooked in its views
that it could even brand them openly as faults without fear of reproach.
This bluff, honest man built the greater part of the palace, "which,"
wrote one of his chroniclers, "with its walls and towers of immense
strength stands like himself, four-square and mighty." About half as
much again, however, was added in later pontificates, and Benedict's
building was a good deal altered; but the four great fortified towers
are his, and the buildings in between, which include his chapel. These
are used now for the storing of archives, and other similar purposes,
and are not shown to the public, but one or two of the towers can be
ascended and magnificent views obtained from them.
Of the massive walls little has been destroyed either by time or by the
many vicissitudes through which the great building has passed. Of all
the architecture that one sees in this country the Popes' Palace is the
most like those huge, enduring, almost brutally strong, buildings that
the Romans left behind them. An ineffaceable impression is gained of
it as one walks up the narrow, winding Rue de la Peyrolie which leads
from the lower parts of the town on the east to the Place du Palais.
Part of the street has been cut out of the naked rock, and far overhead
towers the south wall of the building, looking no less solid and
permanent than the rock itself. It is like a gigantic cliff rearing its
bulk above one, and that impression as of something vaster and stronger
than mere human building is never quite absent from the whole mass, on
whatever point of view it obtrudes itself.
The enormous Court of Honour, which is the first thing you see after
passing in, is undergoing repair, as, fortunately, is the whole of the
building. It badly needed it, for until seven or eight years ago the
greater part of the palace was used as a military barracks, and not
only was the noble Hall of Justice divided up into three floors, and
other parts ruthlessly adapted, but great Gothic windows were destroyed
to give place to commonplace square openings, and in fact no beauty was
spared where it might interfere with convenience. The restoration has
been in hand for over seven years and is expected to take about as long
again before the palace is put back into something like its original
state. The work is being done with the utmost care, as all such things
are done in France, but in many details the damage done has been
irreparable.
The great _Salle du Conclave_ has been cleared of its rubbish and the
tall Gothic windows restored. It is huge and bare. There are no more
than the worn remains of the frescoes with which Clement VI caused
its walls to be covered, either by Simone Memmi himself, or by some
one of his school. Some effort was made nearly a hundred years ago to
induce the military authorities to look after their preservation; but
"the Commandant of the Engineers replied that he did not share the
commissioners' views with regard to the frescoes; they were of little
artistic interest and not worth preserving; in fact they were not
consonant with the spirit of a military establishment."
It was in this hall that Queen Joan of Naples defended herself from the
charge of being privy to the murder of her first husband, and won the
day by her eloquence and beauty. Avignon was hers, and she sold it for
80,000 golden florins to Clement VI, who thus made an excellent bargain
for the papacy.
By a broad staircase one mounts to the fine doorway leading to the
"new" chapel. It contains two doors, and the part on the left has been
barbarously mutilated, but the whole is now carefully restored, as well
as the beautiful chapel itself.
You pass through numerous chambers and corridors, some of them restored
to what they were, others in the hands of the work-people, and some
still showing the hideous wreck that the adaptations to military use
made everywhere of the interior of the palace. There is a room with
charming fourteenth century frescoes of country scenes as pleasant as
anything of the sort I know of. There is a garden with a fish pond and
people preparing to take the disturbed-looking fish out of it; nymphs
bathing; boys getting fruit from a tree; sportsmen rabbiting with
ferrets; others hunting with falcons. The walls are covered with a
realistic and most decorative groundwork of foliage and grass, in which
you can pick out all sorts of trees, flowers, fruits, birds and little
animals. Fortunately the greater part of these delightful paintings are
intact, and a great deal of skill has been shown in restoring them to
something of their pristine state.
The more famous frescoes of Simone Memmi in the chapel of St. John the
Baptist, and those of Matteo di Viterbo in that of St. Martial above it
have not escaped so well.
"In 1816 a Corsican regiment being quartered in the Palace, some of
the soldiers (who as Italians knew the value to collectors of the
St. Jean frescoes) began the exploitation of the neglected chapel
and established a lucrative industry in the corps. Special tools
were fashioned for the work; the men became experts in the art of
detaching the thin layer of plaster whereon the heads were painted,
which they sold to amateurs and dealers."[18]
So in these beautiful New Testament scenes which cover roof and walls
there are many unsightly white patches which sadly lessen the effect of
the whole. But I cannot help thinking that the soldiers must have been
stopped in their depredations, for very much more is left than has been
taken away.
I forget in which of these two chapels it was that I noticed on a
patch of white wall names scribbled, with dates, quite in the modern
tourist's fashion, and as fresh as if they had been written yesterday.
But the script was "German," and the dates of three hundred or so years
ago. So little do habits change!
The rest of the palace that one is allowed to see has left no very
definite impression on my mind, except that of vast space, and, where
it has not yet been cleared of its barrack adaptations, of miserable
degradation. One sees the funnel chimney in the middle of the great
kitchen which was for so long said to have been the torture chamber of
the Inquisition; one gets beautiful views from the higher chambers and
windows and from the towers; and here and there one looks down on to a
neglected space that was once a trim garden.
If one cannot picture the old popes and cardinals walking in the
beautiful garden from which we now look down to the Rhône and across to
Villeneuve and the purple country beyond, they were not without such
pleasures, although it never occurred to any of them to make a garden
just there.
"Among the amenities of the old palace were the spacious and lovely
gardens on the east, with their clipped hedges, avenues of trees,
flower-beds and covered and frescoed walls, all kept fresh and green
by channels of water. John XXII maintained a menagerie of lions and
other wild and strange beasts; stately peacocks swept proudly along
the green swards,--for the inventory of 1369 specifies seventeen
peacocks, some old and some young, whereof six are white."[19]
Even when the restoration is finished it will need a strong effort of
imagination to recall the scenes that were witnessed by these gigantic
walls. They tell of the strength of the place and of the necessity for
that strength. One can imagine the fighting, but it will all be too
much swept and garnished to call up the scenes of splendour and luxury
that were piled one upon another even in times of misery--of war and of
flood and of plague.
The luxury was like nothing that we know of except that of some of
the Roman Imperial courts. Mr. Okey has collected many extraordinary
details, from which I take as an example the account of the banquet
given by two cardinals to Pope Clement V.
"Clement, as he descended from his litter, was received by his hosts
and twenty chaplains, who conducted him to a chamber hung with richest
tapestries from floor to ceiling; he trod on velvet carpet of triple
pile; his state-bed was draped with fine crimson velvet, lined with
white ermine; the sheets of silk were embroidered with silver and
gold. The table was served by four papal knights and twelve squires,
who each received silver girdles and purses filled with gold from the
hosts; fifty cardinals' squires assisted them in serving the banquet,
which consisted of nine courses of three plates each--twenty-seven
dishes in all. The meats were built up in fantastic form: castles,
gigantic stags, boars, horses, &c. After the fourth service, the
cardinals offered his holiness a milk-white steed worth 400 florins;
two gold rings, jewelled with an enormous sapphire and a no less
enormous topaz; and a bowl, worth 100 florins; sixteen cardinal guests
and twenty prelates were given rings and jewels, and twelve young
clerks of the papal house and twenty-four sergeants-at-arms received
purses filled with florins. After the fifth service, a great tower
with a fount whence gushed forth five sorts of choicest wines was
carried in; and a tourney was run during the interval between the
seventh and eighth courses. Then followed a concert of sweetest music,
and dessert was furnished by two trees--one of silver, bearing rarest
fruits of all kinds, and the other loaded with sugared fruits of many
colours. Various wines were then served, whereupon the master cooks,
with thirty assistants, executed dances before the guests. Clement,
by this time, having had enough, retired to his chamber, where, lest
he might faint for lack of refreshment during the night, wine and
spices were brought to him; the entertainment ended with dances and
distractions of many kinds."[20]
The luxury has gone, and so has the terror. The thick-barred windows of
the towers speak of the many who were immured there in pain and misery;
if the kitchen was not a torture-chamber, such a chamber was certainly
to be found elsewhere; somewhere on the walls is the hook from which
was suspended the iron cage in which a cardinal who had offended the
pope was hung up for months in the sight of all. The times needed a
good deal of gilding.