_Saint-Gilles and Montmajour_
This was to be the last full day's walk. I had to meet a friend at
Avignon the next afternoon; then to Arles with no further time for
walking; and then home.
There was a lot of ground to cover. The first stage, after going
halfway to Arles by train, was an eight-mile walk across the plain to
Saint-Gilles. The train started at six, and soon after seven I was on
the road, on a fine still spring morning, and in company with an old
peasant woman who was also going to Saint-Gilles, and had suggested in
the train that we should walk together. I had not known quite how to
refuse, but had thought that after a mile or so I might say that I was
in a hurry, and push on from her. Provençal was her tongue, and French
is not mine; the burden of a conversation lasting for two hours daunted
me.
We walked and talked together for about a mile, and although she must
have been getting on for seventy, and carried a heavy basket, her
steady pace was just a trifle faster than my usual one at the beginning
of a long day's walk. I could not for shame suggest that I should drop
back; besides, she would have offered to walk more slowly. So when we
had exhausted the first burst of conversation, I drew myself together,
lifted my hat, and with a word of apology, forged on ahead with all the
air of a Marathon racer.
She chased me for miles. Whenever I looked back I saw her plodding
form on the straight road across the marsh. I was ashamed of myself,
but I couldn't keep it up. The walk to Saint-Gilles was only to be the
beginning of my day. At a wide turn of the road I took what looked to
be an easy short cut across the marsh. If it had been easy, of course
she would have taken it too, and the end of it was that when I came out
on to the road again after my windings there was her black determined
figure a quarter of a mile ahead of me. So I let her take her pace,
and I took mine, and she crossed the great suspension bridge into
Saint-Gilles nearly half an hour before I did. I saw her the whole way,
and she never looked round. I hope she thought I was ahead of her.
Scarcely any of its original importance is left to Saint-Gilles,
which dates from the earliest dawn of Provençal history. It was the
Phoenician Heraktra. In those days the branch of the Rhône upon which
it stands was an open trade route. The Phoenician traders came to it
from their expeditions to Britain, by way of the Seine valley and the
Rhône. Early in the twelfth century the building of one of the noblest
churches in Provence was begun here; and its remains, in spite of the
successive destructions and mutilations it has received, make it still
well worth a visit.
All that is left in its original state is the wonderful carved façade,
which is finer even than the famous one, of about the same date, of St.
Trophimus at Arles, and takes in three portals instead of one. It is
in its original state only as far as its main structure is concerned,
for its figures have been sadly mutilated by successive generations of
enraged Protestants. But one can be thankful to them for sparing it at
all, instead of treating it as they did the church behind it.
The story of St. Gilles is charmingly told by M. J. Charles-Roux, in
his "Légendes de Provence."
He was a Greek, of royal lineage. In all the country there was not
to be found a man richer than his father, or a woman more chaste and
charitable than his mother. He was baptized with great rejoicing, and
from an early age his parents sought to bring him up in their faith. At
seven years of age he was taught his letters, and thus early he devoted
himself to study and the service of God. Modest and of fine address,
he grew into the flower of his country's youth; his hair was fair and
curling, his skin as white as milk, he had a delicate nose and ears,
white teeth and a sweet mouth.
The day came when God was ready to show His designs concerning him. He
was on his way to school, when he saw crouching in the gutter a poor
cripple, pale, hideous and horrible. The child addressed him, and he
replied, "Sir, hunger is killing and cold overwhelming me; death is
near, and I only want to die." Gilles's eyes filled with tears, and as
he had neither silver nor gold he gave the poor wretch his coat, and he
at once arose cured and thanked God with such fervour that presently
more than a hundred persons appeared on the scene.
The fame of Gilles's holiness began to spread, and soon afterward he
healed a man bitten by a venomous snake.
After his father and mother died he was pressed to marry by his
vassals, who wished him to continue his royal race, but he begged
a respite. He was much troubled by the crowd that besieged his
doors--crippled, dumb, blind, lame,--who besought him to heal them. He
was willing to do so, but dreaded the worldly fame that was beginning
to attach itself to his name. He wished to seek a road that would bring
him nearer to God, and he determined to go to Rome.
He ordered a great feast in his palace, and at night, when all
were sleeping, overcome with the fumes of wine, after praying for a
long time he left his chamber softly, and made his escape from the
battlements, hidden in a fog. He was never seen there again.
After wandering on foot for a long time, he came to the sea, and saw a
ship being driven on to the rocks in a storm. He prayed to God, and the
storm abated, and the ship came safe to shore. He asked the sailors to
take him to Rome, and they, recognizing him for a holy man, took him on
board.
They were for the most part Provençals, and were carrying a rich cargo
of corn from Russia, silks, precious stuffs and spices. They sailed
for days under a clear sky, and never had to touch a rope, for God was
guiding them.
They landed at Marseilles, and Gilles, who had been so rich, went from
door to door, begging his food. After a time, having heard of the good
bishop, Cæsar of Arles, he went to that ancient city. He lodged with
a widow whose daughter had been paralysed for twelve years. When he
had prayed for a moment beside her bed she arose well and joyful. When
the good bishop heard of this miracle, he sent his archdeacon to bring
Gilles to him. The archdeacon found him praying in the church. The
bishop received him with affection and honour and kept him by him for
twelve years, during which time he wrought many miracles.
But this was not the sort of life Gilles had dreamed of. He escaped
from Arles and plunged into the wild forest which surrounded it. At
last he came to a monstrous rock in which some steps had been cut. He
climbed up them and found a pious hermit with whom he lived for twelve
years in perfect communion of prayer and meditation.
Although his retreat was remote and hidden, the piety and the miracles
of St. Gilles were so renowned that at last it was discovered. So he
resolved to find a hiding-place more impenetrable still.
He wandered far into the forest until he came to a cave choked with
brambles. He hid its opening with branches, leaves and clods of turf,
and took it as his hermitage. A fresh spring welled up at a short
distance from it, round which grew a cress upon which he sustained
himself until God sent him a doe which gave him milk. Every day while
he was at his prayers she went into the forest to feed, and returned at
fixed hours to the cave, where Gilles had prepared for her a couch near
his own.
At this time Florenz was king in Provence, under Charlemagne. Holding
his Christmas court at Montpelier, he entertained all the lords of
the country round at banquets and parties of the chase. One evening
as they were feasting news was brought in by the royal huntsman of a
wonderful white hind that had been tracked to her hiding-place in the
forest, and early the following morning the king set out with a great
retinue to chase her. The chase was long and Florenz found himself
ahead of his companions with the hind flying in front of him. As she
was disappearing among the trees, he launched an arrow at her, and
immediately the hermit, Gilles, appeared, to whom the hind had flown
for shelter, and whose hand the king's arrow had pierced.
After this the king conceived a great veneration for the saint, visited
him often alone and pressed him to accept presents. Gilles resisted him
for a long time, but said at last: "Sire, if you really wish to give me
a portion of your lands, of your treasures, of your vessels of gold and
silver, found a monastery upon this spot, and fill it with monks for
the service of God, who shall pray day and night for your people and
for your law."
"I will do so," said the king, "if you will be their abbot."
After much hesitation Gilles consented, and the noble abbey was built
and greatly enriched by gifts from the king. Gilles continued to live
in it the same life as he had lived in the woods, and that his flesh
might be still further mortified he prayed that the wound in his hand
might never heal; which prayer was granted to him.
After a time Gilles's great renown reached Charlemagne, who wished to
confess his sins to so holy a man, and sent an embassy to invite him
to Paris. After consultation with his brethren he went there, and was
received with the utmost veneration and magnificence. But the honour
done to him caused him nothing but shame.
Charlemagne confessed all his sins but one, which he had not the
courage to avow. Gilles pleaded with him for twenty days, but in vain.
One Sunday, as he was going to celebrate the Mass at St. Croix he saw a
demoniac chained to a pillar of the church. His prayers drove out the
demon; all the bells in the city began to ring, and the king came with
a great crowd to hear the Mass. During the celebration Gilles prayed
that the king might be brought to confess the sin that it would cost
him so much to acknowledge, and an angel appeared above the altar and
deposited near the sacred Host a little letter which God Himself had
sent His faithful servant. You can see the scene sculptured on a pillar
in the cathedral of Chartres. The letter announced that the famous sin,
of which we do not know the details, might be remitted to the king
together with all other sins humbly confessed and secretly detested;
also that the saint's own life would soon end and his reign in glory
begin.
Gilles, refusing the king's rich presents, made the journey back to his
monastery in great pain because of his still open wound, but in great
joy, and learnt that during his absence his monks had behaved in all
respects as he could have wished them. He resumed his customary life of
prayer and meditation, but feeling that he would not for long continue
to direct the affairs of his flourishing abbey, and that the favour of
kings was fleeting, he determined to go to Rome to put his monastery
under the protection of the Holy See.
The Pope received him with great honour and granted his request. He
also showed his interest in the church that St. Gilles had built by
giving him two doors of cypress wood, wonderfully carved. St. Gilles
threw them into the Tiber, commanding the water to carry them to his
church. He himself arrived at the moment when they stranded on the
banks of the river, in perfect preservation, and was made happy by this
still further proof of divine favour.
His work was now done, and he prepared himself for death. His monks
stood around him, scarcely able to recite the sacred offices because
of their sobs. Just before midnight he began to recall to them events
in the life of the Saviour, and at the moment of death he had a vision
of the glorious resurrection of Our Lord, and prayed St. Michael
to conduct him to God. These were his last words; he made signs of
blessing those who knelt around him, and two of them saw angels take
the soul that issued from his lips, to carry it to Paradise.
Although the story which I have condensed speaks of Charlemagne, it was
his grandfather, Charles Martel, in whose reign St. Gilles lived, and
who gave him shelter when he fled from the Saracens who had attacked
his monastery. But St. Gilles did die in peace in it in 721, and he had
long before handed over the property to the Holy See, for the Pope's
Bull taking it over in 685 is still extant.
The fine crypt, which fortunately still remains, was constructed in
the eleventh century to receive the tomb of the saint, and its high
altar consecrated by the Pope in 1095. The church above it was begun
twenty years later, and its magnificence can be judged from the ruins
of the choir, which stretch far to the east of the present building,
as well as from the carving of the front which took over thirty years
to complete. In 1562 the victorious Protestant troops murdered the
priests and the choir boys and threw their bodies into the well that is
still to be seen in the crypt. The church, says Mr. T. A. Cook, "was
alternately desecrated by the reformers and used as a fortress by the
churchmen." It was completely destroyed in 1622, the tomb of St. Gilles
removed and the crypt filled with rubbish; "and the façade itself seems
only to have been left standing in order that its carvings might the
more openly be debased and mutilated." At the Revolution still further
havoc was wrought, and it was not until seventy years later that the
crypt was excavated and restored under the auspices of the Commission
of "Monuments Historiques," who also restored as far as possible the
façade.
Considering the vicissitudes it has gone through this splendid work
retains a surprising effect. It stretches right across the front of the
church, except for the two narrow towers on each flank, and is of a
wonderful interest and richness. Another wonderful relic is the Vis de
St. Gilles, the spiral stone staircase that stands among the ruins of
the choir, and the tower. It is famous everywhere among architects for
the delicacy and preciseness of its stone-cutting and vaulting.
Another thing to see in Saint-Gilles is the Maison-Romaine, a tall town
house of the twelfth century which was restored at the same time as the
church. It comes as something of a surprise to the inexpert, it looks
so very modern--rather like the sort of house an advanced architect
might build in Munich today. But its proportions are beautiful, and
the quiet wall space contrasting with the decorations of the windows
is very effective. Indeed, the advanced architect might do worse than
copy such a model. After eight hundred years he could learn more of the
twelfth century builder than he could teach him.
[Illustration: THE MAISON-ROMAINE]
[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE IN THE FARMYARD AT MONTMAJOUR]
I took train to Arles and walked straight out of the station towards
the Abbey of Montmajour two miles distant. Arles itself was to wait for
a few days.
The road lay along a broad shady avenue too full of traffic for
pleasurable tramping, but turned off presently from the main road to
Tarascon, and the mass of the great Abbey could be seen towering above
the trees across the open country.
This great Benedictine abbey, under the stones of which lie buried
the ancient kings of Arles, was founded in the sixth century, and its
splendid church was rebuilt in the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
It was situated on an island among the lagoons of the Camargue, but now
stands overlooking the fertile plain right away to the sea, on what is
no more than a low hill overgrown on one side by a little wood.
I left the road, which goes round by the front, and climbed up through
the trees, to find myself in a littered farmyard, with the walls of
a seventeenth century building, now in ruins, towering above me. The
remains of a carved stone staircase finished off by a rickety wooden
bridge ran up under a bold arch, and had a very extraordinary effect,
springing thus out of the straw and muck of the yard. This great
palace, joined on to the original monastic buildings, seems strangely
out of place even now, more than a hundred years after both suffered
the same destruction. It was built when the abbey was at its richest
and proudest, but was not occupied for long, for the Revolution swept
new and old alike away. Of all the treasures it contained, only three
remain--a Bible of 1320, which is in the museum at Arles, an abbatial
cross in the museum of Cluny, and a twelfth century pyx, now in the
Louvre.
What remain of the buildings themselves have suffered no less changes
of ownership. When they were sold by the state after the Revolution
many of the walls were broken down and the stones taken away to build
bridges and houses and to mend roads. The painter Réatlu of Arles
bought the great tower and saved it. The chapel of St. Croix became
the property of a fisherman, but finally fell into the hands of the
city of Arles, and was restored and maintained by them. This stands
apart from the rest of the abbey, of which the site is still private
property. Until recently the later buildings were partly inhabited by
peasants. Gradually the rest has been bought back, and classed among
the "Monuments Historiques." The buildings thus saved from further
desecration are the church with its crypt and cloisters, the tower, the
"Confessional" of St. Trophimus, and the chapel of St. Croix, and each
and all of these are remarkable.
The church, which was begun early in the eleventh century and was
never quite finished, is of a severe and grateful simplicity. The
enormous crypt beneath it is of a still earlier date, and is still more
remarkable. The apse is divided into five little chapels opening on to
an ambulatory, and from each can be seen the high altar. The cloisters
are best preserved of anything, and retain their stone penthouse
roofing.
But the most interesting thing about Montmajour is the little chapel,
part scooped out of the living rock, part built in the ninth century,
which is called the Confessional of St. Trophimus.
You descend to it down stairs cut in the side of the rock. It stands
in a sort of overgrown garden, and looks as if it were trying to hide
itself. Its rock chambers were no doubt used by the early Christians
for hiding and shelter, in the same way as the catacombs at Rome. At
the east end is a big chamber almost entirely filled with a stone
bench, which opens into two other chambers. Whether St. Trophimus was
ever there or not, it has very much the appearance of a confessional.
And scepticism sinks before this pathetic little secret place, in
which beyond doubt the holy mysteries were celebrated and the faith
taught at a date before one can be certain of perhaps any other
ecclesiastical remains in the country, whatever antiquity they may
claim.
The curious Eastern-looking Chapel of St. Croix stands at some little
distance from the rest of the abbey buildings. It is in the form of
a Greek cross with four semi-circular apses radiating from a central
square-domed tower, and a porch attached to that on the west. Its date
is 1019, but there was probably a cemetery on this spot at a much
earlier date, and it was built entirely as a mortuary chapel. Viollet
le Duc wrote of it:
"The monks brought their dead here processionally; the body was placed
in the porch and the brethren remained outside. When Mass was said,
the body was blessed, and it was conveyed through the chapel and out
at the little south 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."
This little architectural gem with its delicate exterior carvings has
been very carefully preserved. Up to the eighteenth century it was
the object of a popular and crowded pilgrimage on May 3rd, but on the
destruction of the abbey the precious indulgences with which it had
been dowered by successive Popes were transferred to the church of St.
Julian at Arles, and it is now nothing but a "Monument Historique."