from Elne, where it had been founded as early as the sixth century.
The cathedral of St. Jean is a wonderful structure. In the lines of its
apside it suggests those of Albi, while the magnitude of its great
strongly roofed nave is only comparable with that of Bordeaux as to its
general dimensions. The great distinction of this feature comes from the
fact that its Romanesque walls are surmounted by a truly ogival vault.
This great church was originally founded by the king of Majorca, who
held Rousillon in ransom from the king of Aragon in 1324.
The west front is entirely unworthy of the other proportions of the
structure, and decidedly the most brilliant and lively view is that of
the apside and its chapels. There is an odd fourteenth-century tower,
above which is suspended a clock in a cage of iron.
The whole design or outline of the exterior of this not very ancient
cathedral is in the main Spanish; it is at least not French.
This Spanish sentiment is further sustained by many of the interior
accessories and details, of which the chief and most elaborate are an
altar-screen of wood and stone of great magnificence, a marble _retable_
of the seventeenth century, a baptismal font of the twelfth or
thirteenth century, some indifferent paintings, the usual organ _buffet_
with fifteenth-century carving, and a tomb of a former bishop (1695) in
the transept.
The altars, other than the above, are garish and unappealing.
A further notable effect to be seen in the massive nave is the very
excellent "pointed" vaulting.
There are, close beside the present church, the remains of an older St.
Jean--now nought but a ruin.
The Bourse (locally called _La Loge_, from the Spanish _Lonja_) has a
charming cloistered courtyard of a mixed Moorish-Gothic style. It is
well worthy of interest, as is also the citadel and castle of the King
of Majorca. The latter has a unique portal to its chapel.
It is recorded that Bishop Berengarius II. of Perpignan in the year 1019
visited the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and on his return built a
church or chapel on similar lines in memory of his pilgrimage. No
remains of it are visible to-day, nor can it be further traced. Mention
of it is made here from the fact that it seems to have been a worthy
undertaking,--this memorial of a prelate's devotion to his faith.
[Illustration]
XIV
STE. EULALIA D'ELNE
Elne is the first in importance of the dead cities which border the Gulf
of Lyons.
It is the ancient _Illiberis_, frequently mentioned by Pliny, Livy, and,
latterly, Gibbon.
To-day it is ignored by all save the _commis voyageur_ and a
comparatively small number of the genuine French _touristes_.
Formerly the ancient province of Rousillon, in which Elne is situated,
and which bordered upon the Spanish frontier, was distinctly Spanish as
to manners and customs. It is, moreover, the reputed spot where
Hannibal first encamped after crossing the Pyrenees on his march to
Rome.
Like Bayonne, at the other extremity of the Pyrenean mountain chain, it
commanded the gateway to Spain, and even to-day is the real entrance of
the railway route to Barcelona, as is Bayonne to Madrid.
Between these two cities, for a distance approaching one hundred and
eighty miles, there is scarce a highway over the mountain barrier along
which a wheeled vehicle may travel with comfort, and the tiny Republic
of Andorra, though recently threatened with the advent of the railway,
is still isolated and unspoiled from the tourist influence, as well as
from undue intercourse with either France or Spain, which envelop its
few square miles of area as does the Atlantic Ocean the Azores.
To-day Elne is no longer the seat of a bishop, the see of Rousillon
having been transferred to Perpignan in the fourteenth century, after
having endured from the time of the first bishop, Domnus, since the
sixth century.
There has been left as a reminder a very interesting and beautiful
smaller cathedral church of the early eleventh century.
Alterations and restorations, mostly of the fifteenth century, have
changed its material aspect but little, and it still remains a highly
captivating monumental glory; which opinion is further sustained from
the fact that the _Commission des Monuments Historiques_ has had the
fabric under its own special care for many years.
It is decidedly a minor edifice, and its parts are as unimpressive as
its lack of magnitude; still, for all that, the church-lovers will find
much crude beauty in this Romanesque basilica-planned church, with its
dependant cloister of a very beautiful flowing Gothic of the fifteenth
century.
The chief artistic treasures of this ancient cathedral, aside from its
elegant cloister, are a _bénitier_ in white marble; a portal of some
pretensions, leading from the cathedral to its cloister; a
fourteen-century tomb, of some considerable artistic worth; and a
_bas-relief_, called the "Tomb of Constans."
There is little else of note, either in or about the cathedral, and the
town itself has the general air of a glory long past.
[Illustration: ST. JUST _de NARBONNE_]
XV
ST. JUST DE NARBONNE
The ancient province of Narbonenses--afterward comprising Languedoc--had
for its capital what is still the city of Narbonne. One may judge of the
former magnificence of Narbonne by the following lines of _Sidonius
Apollinaris_:
"Salve Narbo potens Salubritate,
Qui Urbè et Rure simul bonus Videris,
Muris, Civibus, ambitu, Tabernis,
Portis, Porticibus, Foro, Theatro,
Delubris, Capitoliis, Monetis,
Thermis, Arcubus, Harreis, Macellis,
Pratis, Fontibus, Insulus, Salinis,
Stagnis, Flumine, Merce, Ponte, Ponto,
Unus qui jure venere divos
Lenoeum, Cererum, Palem, Minervam,
Spicis, Palmite, Poscius, Tapetis."
Narbonne is still mighty and healthful, if one is to judge from the
activities of the present day; is picturesque and pleasing, and far
more comfortably disposed than many cities with a more magnificently
imposing situation.
The city remained faithful to the Romans until the utmost decay of the
western empire, at which time (462) it was delivered to the Goths.
It was first the head of a kingdom, and later, when it came to the
Romans, it was made the capital of a province which comprised the fourth
part of Gaul.
This in turn was subdivided into the provinces of _Narbonenses_,
_Viennensis_, the _Greek Alps_, and the _Maritime Alps_, that is, all of
the later _Savoie_, _Dauphiné_, _Provence_, _Lower Languedoc_,
_Rousillon_, _Toulousan_, and the _Comté de Foix_.
Under the second race of kings, the Dukes of _Septimannia_ took the
title of _Ducs de Narbonne_, but the lords of the city contented
themselves with the name of viscount, which they bore from 1134 to 1507,
when Gaston de Foix--the last Viscount of Narbonne--exchanged it for
other lands, with his uncle, the French king, Louis XII. The most
credulous affirm that the Proconsul Sergius Paulus--converted by St.
Paul--was the first preacher of Christianity at Narbonne.
The Church is here, therefore, of great antiquity, and there are
plausible proofs which demonstrate the claim.
The episcopal palace at Narbonne, closely built up with the Hôtel de
Ville (rebuilt by Viollet-le-Duc), is a realization of the progress of
the art of domestic fortified architecture of the time.
Like its contemporary at Laon in the north, and more particularly after
the manner of the papal palace at Avignon and the archbishop's palace at
Albi, this structure combined the functions of a domestic and official
establishment with those of a stronghold or a fortified place of no mean
pretence.
Dating from 1272, the cathedral of St. Just de Narbonne suggests
comparison with, or at least the influence of, Amiens.
It is strong, hardy, and rich, with a directness of purpose with respect
to its various attributes that in a less lofty structure is wanting.
The height of the choir-vault is perhaps a hundred and twenty odd feet,
as against one hundred and forty-seven at Amiens, and accordingly it
does not suffer in comparison.
It may be remarked that these northern attributes of lofty vaulting and
the high development of the _arc-boutant_ were not general throughout
the south, or indeed in any other region than the north of France. Only
at Bazas, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Auch, Toulouse, and Narbonne do we find
these features in any acceptable degree of perfection.
The architects of the Midi had, by resistance and defiance, conserved
antique traditions with much greater vigour than they had endorsed the
new style, with the result that many of their structures, of a period
contemporary with the early development of the Gothic elsewhere, here
favoured it little if at all.
Only from the thirteenth century onward did they make general use of
ogival vaulting, maintaining with great conservatism the basilica plan
of Roman tradition.
In many other respects than constructive excellence does St. Just show a
pleasing aspect. It has, between the main body of the church and the
present Hôtel de Ville and the remains of the ancient _archevêché_, a
fragmentary cloister which is grand to the point of being scenic. It
dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and is decidedly the
most appealing feature of the entire cathedral precincts.
[Illustration: CLOISTER OF ST. JUST _de NARBONNE_....]
The cathedral itself still remains unachieved as to completeness, but
its _tourelles_, its vaulting, its buttresses, and its crenelated walls
are most impressive.
There are some elaborate tombs in the interior, in general of the time
of Henri IV.
The _trésor_ is rich in missals, manuscripts, ivories, and various altar
ornaments and decorations.
The choir is enclosed with a series of arena-like _loges_, outside which
runs a double aisle.
There are fragmentary evidences of the one-time possession of good
glass, but what paintings are shown appear ordinary and are doubtless of
little worth.
Decidedly the cathedral is an unusually splendid, if not a truly
magnificent, work.
_PART V_
_The Valley of the Garonne_
I
INTRODUCTORY
The basin of the Garonne includes all of the lower Aquitanian province,
Lower Languedoc,--still a debatable and undefinable land,--and much of
that region known of lovers of France, none the less than the native
himself, as the _Midi_.
Literally the term _Midi_ refers to the south of France, but more
particularly that part which lies between the mouth of the Rhône and the
western termination of the Pyrenean mountain boundary between France and
Spain.
The term is stamped indelibly in the popular mind by the events which
emanated from that wonderful march of the legion, known as "_Les Rouges
du Midi_," in Revolutionary times. We have heard much of the excesses of
the Revolution, but certainly the vivid history of "_Les Rouges_" as
recounted so well in that admirable book of Félix Gras (none the less
truthful because it is a novel), which bears the same name, gives every
justification to those valiant souls who made up that remarkable
phalanx; of whose acts most historians and humanitarians are generally
pleased to revile as cruelty and sacrilege unspeakable.
Félix Gras himself has told of the ignoble subjection in which his own
great-grandfather, a poor peasant, was held; and Frederic Mistral tells
of a like incident--of lashing and beating--which was thrust upon a
relative of his. If more reason were wanted, a perusal of the written
records of the Marseilles Battalion will point the way. Written history
presents many stubborn facts, difficult to digest and hard to swallow;
but the historical novel in the hands of a master will prove much that
is otherwise unacceptable. A previous acquaintance with this fascinating
and lurid story is absolutely necessary for a proper realization of the
spirit which endowed the inhabitants of this section of the _pays du
Midi_.
To-day the same spirit lives to a notable degree. The atmosphere and the
native character alike are both full of sunshine and shadow; grown men
and women are yet children, and gaiety, humour, and passion abound
where, in the more austere North, would be seen nought but indifference
and indolence.
It is the fashion to call the South languid, but nowhere more than at
Bordeaux--where the Garonne joins La Gironde--will you find so great and
ceaseless an activity.
The people are not, to be sure, of the peasant class, still they are not
such town-dwellers as in many other parts, and seem to combine, as do
most of the people of southern France, a languor and keenness which are
intoxicating if not stimulating.
Between Bordeaux and Toulouse are not many great towns, but, in the
words of Taine, one well realizes that "it is a fine country." The
Garonne valley, with a fine alluvial soil, grows, productively and
profitably, corn, tobacco, and hemp; and by the utmost industry and
intelligence the workers are able to prosper exceedingly.
The traveller from the Mediterranean across to the Atlantic--or the
reverse--by rail, will get glimpses now and then of this wonderfully
productive river-bottom, as it flows yellow-brown through its
osier-bedded banks; and again, an intermittent view of the Canal du
Midi, upon whose non-raging bosom is carried a vast water-borne traffic
by barge and canal-boat, which even the development of the railway has
not been able to appreciably curtail.
Here, too, the peasant proprietor is largely in evidence, which is an
undoubted factor in the general prosperity. His blockings, hedgings, and
fencings have spoiled the expanse of hillside and vale in much the same
manner as in Albion. This may be a pleasing feature to the uninitiated,
but it is not a picturesque one. However, the proprietorship of small
plots of land, worked by their non-luxury demanding owners, is
accountable for a great deal of the peace and plenty with which all
provincial France, if we except certain mountainous regions, seems to
abound. It may not provide a superabundance of this world's wealth and
luxury, but the French farmer--in a small way--has few likes of that
nature, and the existing conditions make for a contentment which the
dull, brutal, and lethargic farm labourer of some parts of England might
well be forced to emulate, if even by ball and chain.
Flat-roofed houses, reminiscent of Spain or Italy--born of a mild
climate--add a pleasing variety of architectural feature, while the
curiously hung bells--with their flattened belfries, like the headstones
in a cemetery--suggest something quite different from the motives which
inspired the northern builders, who enclosed their chimes in a
roofed-over, open-sided cubicle. The bells here hang merely in apertures
open to the air on each side, and ring out sharp and true to the last
dying note. It is a most picturesque and unusual arrangement, hardly to
be seen elsewhere as a characteristic feature outside Spain itself, and
in some of the old Missions, which the Spanish Fathers built in the
early days of California.
Between Bayonne and Bordeaux, and bordered by the sea, the Garonne, and
the Adour, is a nondescript land which may be likened to the deserts of
Africa or Asia, except that its barrenness is of the sea salty. It is by
no means unpeopled, though uncultivated and possessed of little
architectural splendour of either a past or the present day.
Including the half of the department of the Gironde, a corner of Lot et
Garonne, and all of that which bears its name, the Landes forms of
itself a great seaboard plain or morass. It is said by a geographical
authority that the surface so very nearly approaches the rectilinear
that for a distance of twenty-eight miles between the dismal villages of
Lamothe and Labonheyre the railway is "a visible meridian."
The early eighteenth-century writers--in English--used to revile all
France, so far as its topographical charms were concerned, with
panegyrics upon its unloveliness and lack of variety, and of being
anything more than a flat, arid land, which was not sufficient even unto
itself.
What induced this extraordinary reasoning it is hard to realize at the
present day.
Its beauties are by no means as thinly sown as is thought by those who
know them slightly--from a window of a railway carriage, or a sojourn of
a month in Brittany, a week in Provence, or a fortnight in Touraine.
The _ennui_ of a journey through France is the result of individual
incapacity for observation, not of the country. Above all, it is
certainly not true of Guienne or Gascony, nor of Provence, nor of
Dauphiné, nor Auvergne, nor Savoie.
As great rivers go, the Garonne is not of very great size, nor so very
magnificent in its reaches, nor so very picturesque,--with that minutiæ
associated with English rivers of a like rank,--but it is suggestive of
far more than most streams of its size and length, wherever found.
Its source is well within the Spanish frontier, in the picturesque Val
d'Aran, where the boundary between the two countries makes a curious
détour, and leaves the crest of the Pyrenees, which it follows
throughout--with this exception--from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
The Garonne becomes navigable at Cazères, some distance above Toulouse,
and continues its course, enhanced by the confluence of the Tarn, the
Lot, the Arriège, and the Dordogne, beyond the junction of which, two
hundred and seventy odd miles from the head of navigation, the estuary
takes on the nomenclature of _La Gironde_.
Of the ancient provinces of these parts, the most famous is Guienne,
that "fair duchy" once attached--by a subtle process of reasoning--to
the English crown.
It is distinguished, as to its economic aspect, by its vast vineyards,
which have given the wines, so commonly esteemed, the name of claret.
These and the other products of the country have found their way into
all markets of the world through the Atlantic coast metropolis of
Bordeaux.
The Gascogne of old was a large province to the southward of Guienne. A
romantic land, say the chroniclers and _mere litterateurs_ alike.
"Peopled by a race fiery, ardent, and impetuous ... with a peculiar
tendency to boasting, hence the term _gasconade_." The peculiar and
characteristic feature of Gascogne, as distinct from that which holds in
the main throughout these parts, is that strange and wild section called
the _Landes_, which is spoken of elsewhere.
The ancient province of Languedoc, which in its lower portion is
included in this section, is generally reputed to be the pride of France
with regard to climate, soil, and scenery. Again, this has been ruled
otherwise, but a more or less intimate acquaintance with the region does
not fail to endorse the first claim. This wide, strange land has not
vastly changed its aspect since the inhabitants first learned to fly
instead of fight.
This statement is derived to a great extent from legend, but, in
addition, is supported by much literary and historical opinion, which
has recorded its past. It is not contemptuous criticism any more than
Froissart's own words; therefore let it stand.
When the French had expelled the Goths beyond the Pyrenees, Charlemagne
established his governors in Languedoc with the title of Counts of
Toulouse. The first was Corson, in 778; the second St. W. du Courtnez or
Aux-Cornets, from whence the princes of Orange derive their pedigree, as
may be inferred from the hunting-horns in their arms.
Up to the eighteenth century these states retained a certain
independence and exercise of home rule, and had an Assembly made up of
"the three orders of the kingdom," the clergy, the nobility, and the
people. The Archbishop of Narbonne was president of the body, though he
was seldom called upon but to give the king money. This he acquired by
the laying on of an extraordinary imposition under the name of
"_Don-Gratuit_."
The wide, rolling country of Lower Languedoc has no very grand
topographical features, but it is watered by frequent and ample streams,
and peopled with row upon row of sturdy trees, with occasional groves of
mulberries, olives, and other citrus fruits. Over all glows the
luxuriant southern sun with a tropical brilliance, but without its
fierce burning rays.
Mention of the olive suggests the regard which most of us have for this
tree of romantic and sentimental association. As a religious emblem, it
is one of the most favoured relics which has descended to us from
Biblical times.
A writer on southern France has questioned the beauty of the growing
tree. It does, truly, look somewhat mop-headed, and it does spread
somewhat like a mushroom, but, with all that, it is a picturesque and
prolific adjunct to a southern landscape, and has been in times past a
source of inspiration to poets and painters, and of immeasurable profit
to the thrifty grower.
The worst feature which can possibly be called up with respect to Lower
Languedoc is the "skyey influences" of the Mistral, dry and piercingly
cold wind which blows southward through all the Rhône valley with a
surprising strength.
Madame de Sévigné paints it thus in words:
"_Le tourbillon, l'ouragan, tous les diables dechainés qui veulent bien
emporter votre château._"
Foremost among the cities of the region are Toulouse, Carcassonne,
Montpellier, Narbonne, and Béziers, of which Carcassonne is preëminent
as to its picturesque interest, and perhaps, as well, as to its storied
past.
The Pyrenees have of late attracted more and more attention from the
tourist, who has become sated with the conventionality of the "trippers'
tour" to Switzerland. The many attractive resorts which the Pyrenean
region has will doubtless go the way of others elsewhere--if they are
given time, but for the present this entire mountain region is possessed
of much that will appeal to the less conventional traveller.
Of all the mountain ranges of Europe, the Pyrenees stand unique as to
their regularity of configuration and strategic importance. They bind
and bound Spain and France with a bony ligature which is indented like
the edge of a saw.
From the Atlantic at Bayonne to the Mediterranean at Port Bou, the
mountain chain divides its valleys and ridges with the regularity of a
wall-trained shrub or pear-tree, and sinks on both sides to the level
plains of France and Spain. In the midst of this rises the river
Garonne. Its true source is in the Piedrafitta group of peaks, whence
its waters flow on through Toulouse, various tributaries combining to
give finally to Bordeaux its commanding situation and importance. Around
its source, which is the true centre of the Pyrenees, is the parting
line between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. On one side the waters
flow down through the fields of France to the Biscayan Bay, and on the
other southward and westward through the Iberian peninsula.
Few of the summits exceed the height of the ridge by more than two
thousand feet; whereas in the Alps many rise from six to eight thousand
feet above the _massif_, while scenic Mont Blanc elevates its head over
fifteen thousand feet.
As a barrier, the Pyrenees chain is unique. For over one hundred and
eighty miles, from the Col de la Perche to Maya--practically a suburb of
Bayonne--not a carriage road nor a railway crosses the range.
The etymology of the name of this mountain chain is in dispute. Many
suppose it to be from the Greek _pur_ (fire), alluding to the volcanic
origin of the peaks. This is endorsed by many, while others consider
that it comes from the Celtic word _byren_, meaning a mountain. Both
derivations are certainly apropos, but the weight of favour must always
lie with the former rather than the latter.
The ancient province of Béarn is essentially mediæval to-day. Its local
tongue is a pure Romance language; something quite distinct from mere
_patois_. It is principally thought to be a compound of Latin and
Teutonic with an admixture of Arabic.
This seems involved, but, as it is unlike modern French, or Castilian,
and modern everything else, it would seem difficult for any but an
expert student of tongues to place it definitely. To most of us it
appears to be but a jarring jumble of words, which may have been left
behind by the followers of the various conquerors which at one time or
another swept over the land.
II
ST. ANDRÉ DE BORDEAUX
"One finds here reminders of the Visigoths, the Franks, the
Saracens, and the English; and the temples, theatres, arenas, and
monuments by which each made his mark of possession yet remain."
--AURELIAN SCHOLL.
Taine in his _Carnets de Voyage_ says of Bordeaux: "It is a sort of
second Paris, gay and magnificent ... amusement is the main business."
Bordeaux does not change. It has ever been advanced, and always a centre
of gaiety. Its fêtes and functions quite rival those of the capital
itself,--at times,--and its opera-house is the most famed and
magnificent in France, outside of Paris.
It is a city of enthusiastic demonstrations. It was so in 1814 for the
Bourbons, and again a year later for the emperor on his return from
Elba.
In 1857 it again surpassed itself in its enthusiasm for Louis Napoleon,
when he was received in the cathedral, under a lofty dais, and led to
the altar with the cry of "_Vive l'empereur_;" while during the bloody
Franco-Prussian war it was the seat of the provisional government of
Thiers.
Here the Gothic wave of the North has produced in the cathedral of St.
André a remarkably impressive and unexpected example of the style.
In the general effect of size alone it will rank with many more
important and more beautiful churches elsewhere. Its total length of
over four hundred and fifty feet ranks it among the longest in France,
and its vast nave, with a span of sixty feet, aisleless though it be,
gives a still further expression of grandeur and magnificence.
It is known that three former cathedrals were successfully destroyed by
invading Goths, Saracens, and warlike Normans.
Yet another structure was built in the eleventh century, which, with the
advent of the English in Guienne, in the century following, was enlarged
and magnified into somewhat of an approach to the present magnificent
dimensions, though no English influence prevailed toward erecting a
central tower, as might have been anticipated. Instead we have two
exceedingly graceful and lofty spired towers flanking the north
transept, and yet another single tower, lacking its spire, on the south.
The portal of the north transept--of the fourteenth century--is an
elaborate work of itself. It is divided into two bays that join beneath
a dais, on which is a statue of Bertrand de Goth, who was Pope in 1305,
under the name of Clement V. He is here clothed in sacerdotal habits,
and stands upright in the attitude of benediction.
At the lower right-hand side are statues of six bishops, but, like that
of Pope Clement, they do not form a part of the constructive elements of
the portal, as did most work of a like nature in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, but are made use of singly as a decorative motive.
The spring of the arch which surrounds the tympanum is composed of a
cordon of foliaged stone separating the six angels of the _première
archivolte_ from the twelve apostles of the second, and the fourteen
patriarchs and prophets of the third.
In the tympanum are three _bas-reliefs_ superimposed one upon the
other, the upper being naturally the smaller. They represent the Christ
triumphant, seated on a dais between two angels, one bearing a staff and
the other a veil, while above hover two other angelic figures holding
respectively the moon and sun.
The arrangement is not so elaborate or gracefully executed as many, but
in its simple and expressive symbolism, in spite of the fact that the
whole added ornament appears an afterthought, is far more convincing
than many more pretentious works of a similar nature.
Another exterior feature of note is seen at the third pillar at the
right of the choir. It is a curious double (back-to-back) statue of Ste.
Anne and the Virgin. It is of stone and of the late sixteenth century,
when sculpture--if it had not actually debased itself by superfluity of
detail--was of an excellence of symmetry which was often lacking
entirely from work of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
The choir-chevet is a magnificent pyramidal mass of piers, pinnacles,
and buttresses of much elegance.
The towers which flank the north transept are adorned with an excellent
disposition of ornament.
The greater part of this cathedral was constructed during the period of
English domination; the choir would doubtless never have been achieved
in its present form had it not been for the liberality of Edward I. and
Pope Clement V., who had been the archbishop of the diocese.
The cathedral of St. André dates practically from 1252, and is, in
inception and execution, a very complete Gothic church.
Over its aisleless nave is carried one of the boldest and most
magnificent vaults known. The nave is more remarkable, however, for this
gigantic attribute than for any other excellencies which it possesses.
In the choir, which rises much higher than the nave, there comes into
being a double aisle on either side, as if to make up for the
deficiencies of the nave in this respect.
The choir arrangement and accessories are remarkably elaborate, though
many of them are not of great artistic worth. Under the organ are two
sculptured Renaissance _bas-reliefs_, taken from the ancient _jube_, and
representing a "Descent from the Cross" and "Christ Bearing the Cross."
There are two religious paintings of some value, one by Jordaens, and
the other by Alex. Veronese. Before the left transept is a monument to
Cardinal de Cheverus, with his statue. Surrounding the stonework of a
monument to d'Ant de Noailles (1662) is a fine work of wood-carving.
The high-altar is of the period contemporary with the main body of the
cathedral, and was brought thither from the Église de la Réole.
The Province of Bordeaux, as the early ecclesiastical division was
known, had its archiepiscopal seat at Bordeaux in the fourth century,
though it had previously (in the third century) been made a bishopric.
III
CATHÉDRALE DE LECTOURE
Lectoure, though defunct as a bishopric to-day, had endured from the
advent of Heuterius, in the sixth century, until 1790.
In spite of the lack of ecclesiastical remains of a very great rank,
there is in its one-time cathedral a work which can hardly be
contemplated except with affectionate admiration.
The affairs of a past day, either with respect to Church or State,
appear not to have been very vivid or highly coloured; in fact, the
reverse appears to be the case. In pre-mediæval times--when the city was
known as the Roman village of _Lactora_--it was strongly fortified, like
most hilltop towns of Gaul.
The cathedral dates for the most part from the thirteenth century, and
in the massive tower which enwraps its façade shows strong indications
of the workmanship of an alien hand, which was neither French nor
Italian. This tower is thought to resemble the Norman work of England
and the north of France, and in some measure it does, though it may be
questioned as to whether this is the correct classification. This tower,
whatever may have been its origin, is, however, one of those features
which is to be admired for itself alone; and it amply endorses and
sustains the claim of this church to a consideration more lasting than a
mere passing fancy.
The entire plan is unusually light and graceful, and though, by no
stretch of opinion could it be thought of as Gothic, it has not a little
of the suggestion of the style, which at a former time must have been
even more pronounced in that its western tower once possessed a spire
which rose to a sky-piercing height.
The lower tower still remains, but the spire, having suffered from
lightning and the winds at various times, was, a century or more ago,
removed.
The nave has a series of lateral chapels, each surmounted by a sort of
gallery or tribune, which would be notable in any church edifice, and
there is fine traceried vaulting in the apsidal chapels, which also
contain some effective, though modern coloured glass.
The former episcopal residence is now the local Mairie.
On a clear day, it is said, the towers of the cathedral at Auch may be
seen to the northward, while in the opposite direction the serrated
ridge of the Pyrenees is likewise visible.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de BAYONNE_]
IV
NOTRE DAME DE BAYONNE
"Distant are the violet Pyrenees, wonderful and regal in their
grandeur. The sun is bright, and laughs joyously at the Béarnais
peasant."
--JEAN RAMEAU.
Bayonne is an ancient town, and was known by the Romans as _Lapurdum_.
As a centre of Christianity, it was behind its neighbours, as no
bishopric was founded here until Arsias Rocha held the see in the ninth
century. No church-building of remark followed for at least two
centuries, when the foundations were laid upon which the present
cathedral was built up.
Like the cities and towns of Rousillon, at the opposite end of the
Pyrenean chain, Bayonne has for ever been of mixed race and
characteristics. Basques, Spaniards, Béarnese, and "alien French"--as
the native calls them--went to make up its conglomerate population in
the past, and does even yet in considerable proportions.
To the reader of history, the mediæval Béarn and Navarre, which to-day
forms the Department of the Basses-Pyrénées in the southwest corner of
France, will have the most lively interest, from the fact of its having
been the principality of _Henri Quatre_, the "good king" whose name was
so justly dear. The history of the Béarnese is a wonderful record of a
people of which too little is even yet known.
Bayonne itself has had many and varied historical associations, though
it is not steeped in that antiquity which is the birthright of many
another favoured spot.
Guide-books and the "notes-and-queries columns" of antiquarian journals
have unduly enlarged upon the fact that the bayonet--to-day a well-nigh
useless appendage as a weapon of war--was first invented here. It is
interesting as a fact, perhaps, but it is not of æsthetic moment.
The most gorgeous event of history connected with Bayonne and its
immediate vicinity--among all that catalogue, from the minor Spanish
invasions to Wellington's stupendous activities--was undoubtedly that
which led up to the famous Pyrenean Treaty made on the Isle du Faisan,
close beside the bridge, in the river Bidassoa, on the Spanish frontier.
The memory of the parts played therein by Mazarin and De Haro, and not
less the gorgeous pavilion in which the function was held, form a
setting which the writers of "poetical plays" and "historical romances"
seem to have neglected.
This magnificent apartment was decorated by Velasquez, who, it is said,
died of his inglorious transformation into an upholsterer.
The cathedral at Bayonne is contemporary with those at Troyes, Meaux,
and Auxerre, in the north of France. It resembles greatly the latter as
to general proportions and situation, though it possesses two completed
spires, whereas St. Etienne, at Auxerre, has but one.
In size and beauty the cathedral at Bayonne is far above the lower rank
of the cathedrals of France, and in spite of extensive restorations, it
yet stands forth as a mediæval work of great importance.
From a foundation of the date of 1140, a structure was in part completed
by 1213, at which time the whole existing fabric suffered the ravages of
fire. Work was immediately undertaken again, commencing with the choir;
and, except for the grand portal of the west front, the whole church was
finished by the mid-sixteenth century.
Restoration of a late date, induced by the generosity of a native of the
city, has resulted in the completion of the cathedral, which, if not a
really grand church to-day, is an exceedingly near approach thereto.
The fine western towers are modern, but they form the one note which
produces the effect of _ensemble_, which otherwise would be entirely
wanting.
The view from the Quai Bergemet, just across the Adour, for
picturesqueness of the quality which artists--tyros and masters
alike--love to sketch, is reminiscent only of St. Lo in Normandy.
Aside from the charm of its general picturesqueness of situation and
grouping, Notre Dame de Bayonne will appeal mostly by its interior
arrangements and embellishments.
The western portal is still lacking the greatness which future ages may
yet bestow upon it, and that of the north transept, by which one enters,
is, though somewhat more ornate, not otherwise remarkable.
A florid cloister of considerable size attaches itself on the south,
but access is had only from the sacristy.
The choir and apse are of the thirteenth century, and immediately
followed the fire of 1213.
Neither the transepts nor choir are of great length; indeed, they are
attenuated as compared with those of the more magnificent churches of
the Gothic type, of which this is, in a way, an otherwise satisfying
example.
The patriotic Englishman will take pride in the fact that the English
arms are graven somewhere in the vaulting of the nave. He may not be
able to spy them out,--probably will not be,--but they likely enough
existed, as a mid-Victorian writer describes them minutely, though no
modern guides or works of local repute make mention of the feature in
any way. The triforium is elegantly traceried, and is the most worthy
and artistic detail to be seen in the whole structure.
The clerestory windows contain glass of the fifteenth century; much
broken to-day, but of the same excellent quality of its century, and
that immediately preceding. The remainder of the glass, in the
clerestory and choir, is modern.
In the sacristy is a remarkable series of perfectly preserved
thirteenth-century sculptures in stone which truthfully--with the
before-mentioned triforum--are the real "art treasures" of the
cathedral. The three naves; the nave proper and its flanking aisles; the
transepts, attenuated though they be; and the equally shallow choir, all
in some way present a really grand effect, at once harmonious and
pleasing.
The pavement of the sanctuary is modern, as also the high-altar, but
both are generously good in design. These furnishings are mainly of
Italian marbles, hung about with tapestries, which, if not of
superlative excellence, are at least effective.
Modern mural paintings with backgrounds in gold decorate the _abside_
chapels.
There are many attributes of picturesque quality scattered throughout
the city: its unique trade customs, its shipping, its donkeys, and,
above any of these, its women themselves picturesque and beautiful. All
these will give the artist many lively suggestions.
Not many of the class, however, frequent this Biscayan city; which is a
loss to art and to themselves. A plea is herein made that its
attractions be better known by those who have become _ennuied_ by the
"resorts."
V
ST. JEAN DE BAZAS
At the time the grand cathedrals of the north of France were taking on
their completed form, a reflex was making itself felt here in the South.
Both at Bayonne and Bazas were growing into being two beautiful churches
which partook of many of the attributes of Gothic art in its most
approved form.
St. Jean de Bazas is supposedly of a tenth-century foundation, but its
real beginnings, so far as its later approved form is concerned, came
only in 1233. From which time onward it came quickly to its completion,
or at least to its dedication.
It was three centuries before its west front was completed, and when so
done--in the sixteenth century--it stood out, as it does to-day, a
splendid example of a façade, completely covered with statues of such
proportions and excellence that it is justly accounted the richest in
the south of France.
It quite equals, in general effect, such well-peopled fronts as Amiens
or Reims; though here the numbers are not so great, and, manifestly, not
of as great an excellence.
This small but well-proportioned church has no transepts, but the
columnar supports of its vaulting presume an effect of length which only
Gothic in its purest forms suggests.
The Huguenot rising somewhat depleted and greatly damaged the sculptured
decorations of its façade, and likewise much of the interior ornament,
but later repairs have done much to preserve the effect of the original
scheme, and the church remains to-day an exceedingly gratifying and
pleasing example of transplanted Gothic forms.
The diocese dates from the foundation of Sextilius, in the sixth
century.
VI
NOTRE DAME DE LESCAR
The bishopric here was founded in the fifth century by St. Julian, and
lasted till the suppression of 1790; but of all of its importance of
past ages, which was great, little is left to-day of ecclesiastical
dignity.
Lescar itself is an attractive enough small town of France,--it contains
but a scant two thousand inhabitants,--but has no great distinction to
important rank in any of the walks of life; indeed, its very aspect is
of a glory that has departed.
It has, however, like so many of the small towns of the ancient Béarn, a
notably fine situation: on a high _coteau_ which rises loftily above the
_route nationale_ which runs from Toulouse to Bayonne.
From the terrace of the former cathedral of Notre Dame can be seen the
snow-clad ridge of the Pyrenees and the umbrageous valley and plain
which lie between. In this verdant land there is no suggestion of what
used--in ignorance or prejudice--to be called "an aspect austere and
sterile."
The cathedral itself is bare, unto poverty, of tombs and monuments, but
a mosaic-worked pavement indicates, by its inscriptions and symbols,
that many faithful and devout souls lie buried within the walls.
The edifice is of imposing proportions, though it is not to be classed
as truly great. From the indications suggested by the heavy pillars and
grotesquely carved capitals of its nave, it is manifest that it has been
built up, at least in part, from remains of a very early date. It mostly
dates from the twelfth century, but in that it was rebuilt during the
period of the Renaissance, it is to the latter classification that it
really belongs.
The curiously carved capitals of the columns of the nave share, with the
frescoes of the apse, the chief distinction among the accessory details.
They depict, in their ornate and deeply cut heads, dragons and other
weird beasts of the land and fowls of the air, in conjunction with
unshapely human figures, and while all are intensely grotesque, they are
in no degree offensive.
There is no exceeding grace or symmetry of outline in any of the parts
of this church, but, nevertheless, it has the inexplicable power to
please, which counts for a great deal among such inanimate things as
architectural forms. It would perhaps be beyond the powers of any one to
explain why this is so frequently true of a really unassuming church
edifice; more so, perhaps, with regard to churches than to most other
things--possibly it is because of the local glamour or sentiment which
so envelops a religious monument, and hovers unconsciously and
ineradicably over some shrines far more than others. At any rate, the
former cathedral of Notre Dame at Lescar has this indefinable quality to
a far greater degree than many a more ambitiously conceived fabric.
The round-arched window and doorway most prevail, and the portal in
particular is of that deeply recessed variety which allows a mellow
interior to unfold slowly to the gaze, rather than jump at once into
being, immediately one has passed the outer lintel or jamb.
The entire suggestion of this church, both inside and out, is of a
structure far more massive and weighty than were really needed for a
church of its size, but for all that its very stable dimensions were
well advised in an edifice which was expected to endure for ages.
The entire apse is covered, inside, with a series of frescoes of a very
acceptable sort, which, though much defaced to-day, are the principal
art attribute of the church. Their author is unknown, but they are
probably the work of some Italian hand, and have even been credited to
Giotto.
The choir-stalls are quaintly carved, with a luxuriance which, in some
manner, approaches the Spanish style. They are at least representative
of that branch of Renaissance art which was more representative of the
highest expression than any other.
In form, this old cathedral follows the basilica plan, and is perhaps
two hundred feet in length, and some seventy-five in width.
The grandfather of Henri IV. and his wife--_la Marguerites des
Marguerites_--were formerly buried in this cathedral, but their remains
were scattered by either the Huguenots or the Revolutionists.
Curiously enough, too, Lescar was the former habitation of a Jesuit
College, founded by Henri IV. after his conversion to the Roman faith,
but no remains of this institution exist to-day.
[Illustration]
VII
L'ÉGLISE DE LA SÈDE: TARBES
Froissart describes Tarbes as "a fine large town, situated in a plain
country; there is a city and a town and a castle ... the beautiful river
Lisse which runs throughout all Tharbes, and divides it, the which river
is as clear as a fountain."
Froissart himself nods occasionally, and on this particular occasion has
misnamed the river which flows through the city, which is the Adour. The
rest of his description might well apply to-day, and the city is most
charmingly and romantically environed.
Its cathedral will not receive the same adulation which is bestowed upon
the charms of the city itself. It is a poor thing, not unlike, in
appearance, a market-house or a third-rate town hall of some mean
municipality.
Once the Black Prince and his "fair maid of Kent" came to this town of
the Bigorre, to see the Count of Armagnac, under rather doleful
circumstances for the count, who was in prison and in debt to Gaston
Phoebus for the amount of his ransom.
The "fair maid," however, appears to have played the part of a good
fairy, and prevailed upon the magnificent Phoebus to reduce the ransom
to the extent of fifty thousand francs.
In this incident alone there lies a story, of which all may read in
history, and which is especially recommended to those writers of
swash-buckler romances who may feel in need of a new plot.
There is little in Tarbes but the memory of a fair past to compel
attention from the lover of antiquity, of churches, or of art; and there
are no remains of any note--even of the time when the Black Prince held
his court here.
The bishopric is very ancient, and dates from the sixth century, when
St. Justin first filled the office. In spite of this, however, there is
very little inspiration to be derived from a study of this quite
unconvincing cathedral, locally known as the Église de la Sède.
This Romanesque-Transition church, though dating from the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, has neither the strength and character of the
older style, nor the vigour of the new.
The nave is wide, but short, and has no aisles. At the transept is a
superimposed octagonal cupola, which is quite unbeautiful and
unnecessary. It is a fourteenth-century addition which finally oppresses
this ungainly heavy edifice beyond the hope of redemption.
Built upon the façade is a Renaissance portal which of itself would be a
disfigurement anywhere, but which here gives the final blow to a
structure which is unappealing from every point.
The present-day prefecture was the former episcopal residence.
The bishopric, which to-day has jurisdiction over the Department of the
Hautes-Pyrénées, is a suffragan of the mother-see of Auch.
VIII
CATHÉDRALE DE CONDOM
The history of Condom as an ecclesiastical see is very brief.
It was established only in 1317, on an ancient abbey foundation, whose
inception is unknown.
For three centuries only was it endowed with diocesan dignity. Its last
_titulaire_ was Bishop Bossuet.
The fine Gothic church, which was so short-lived as a cathedral, is more
worthy of admiration than many grander and more ancient.
It dates from the early sixteenth century, and shows all the distinct
marks of its era; but it is a most interesting church nevertheless, and
is possessed of a fine unworldly cloister, which as much as many
another--more famous or more magnificent--must have been conducive to
inspired meditation.
The portal rises to a considerable height of elegance, but the façade
is otherwise austere.
In the interior, a choir-screen in cut stone is the chief artistic
treasure. The sacristy is a finely decorated and beautifully
proportioned room.
In the choir is a series of red brick or terra-cotta stalls of poor
design and of no artistic value whatever.
The ancient residence of the bishops is now the Hôtel de Ville, and is a
good example of late Gothic domestic architecture. It is decidedly the
architectural _pièce de resistance_ of the town.
IX
CATHÉDRALE DE MONTAUBAN
Montauban, the location of an ancient abbey, was created a bishopric, in
the Province of Toulouse, in 1317, under Bertrand du Puy. It was a
suffragan of the see of Toulouse after that city had been made an
archbishopric in the same year, a rank it virtually holds to-day, though
the mother-see is now known by the double vocable of Toulouse-Narbonne.
Montauban is in many ways a remarkable little city; remarkable for its
tidy picturesqueness, for its admirable situation, for the added
attraction of the river Tarn, which rushes tumblingly past its _quais_
on its way from the Gorges to the Garonne; in short, Montauban is a most
fascinating centre of a life and activity, not so modern that it jars,
nor yet so mediæval that it is uncomfortably squalid.
The lover of architecture will interest himself far more in the
thirteenth-century bridge of bricks which crosses the Tarn on seven
ogival arches, than he will in the painfully ordinary and unworthy
cathedral, which is a combination of most of the undesirable features of
Renaissance church-building.
The façade is, moreover, set about with a series of enormous sculptured
effigies perched indiscriminately wherever it would appear that a
foothold presented itself. There are still a few unoccupied niches and
cornices, which some day may yet be peopled with other figures as gaunt.
Two ungraceful towers flank a classical portico, one of which is
possessed of the usual ludicrous clock-face.
The interior, with its unusual flood of light from the windows of the
clerestory, is cold and bare. Its imposed pilasters and heavy cornices
are little in keeping with the true conception of Christian
architecture, and its great height of nave--some eighty odd feet--lends
a further chilliness to one's already lukewarm appreciation.
The one artistic detail of Montauban's cathedral is the fine painting by
Ingres (1781-1867) to be seen in the sacristy, if by any chance you can
find the sacristan--which is doubtful. It is one of this artist's most
celebrated paintings, and is commonly referred to as "The Vow of Louis
XIII."
[Illustration: ST. ETIENNE _de CAHORS_.]
X
ST. ETIENNE DE CAHORS
St. Genulphe was the first bishop of Cahors, in the fourth century. The
diocese was then, as now, a suffragan of Albi. The cathedral of St.
Etienne was consecrated in 1119, but has since--and many times--been
rebuilt and restored.
This church is but one of the many of its class, built in Aquitaine at
this period, which employed the cupola as a distinct feature. It shares
this attribute in common with the cathedrals at Poitiers, Périgueux, and
Angoulême, and the great churches of Solignac, Fontevrault, and
Souillac, and is commonly supposed to be an importation or adaptation of
the domes of St. Marc's at Venice.
A distinct feature of this development is that, while transepts may or
may not be wanting, the structures are nearly always without side
aisles.
What manner of architecture this style may presume to be is impossible
to discuss here, but it is manifestly not Byzantine _pur-sang_, as most
guide-books would have the tourist believe.
Although much mutilated in many of its accessories and details, the
cathedral at Cahors fairly illustrates its original plan.
There are no transepts, and the nave is wide and short, its area being
entirely roofed by the two circular cupolas, each perhaps fifty feet in
diameter. In height these two details depart from the true hemisphere,
as has always been usual in dome construction. There were discovered, as
late as 1890, in this church, many mural paintings of great interest. Of
the greatest importance was that in the westerly cupola, which presents
an entire composition, drawn in black and colour.
The cupola is perhaps forty feet in diameter, and is divided by the
decorations into eight sectors. The principal features of this
remarkable decoration are the figures of eight of the prophets, David,
Daniel, Jeremiah, Jonah, Ezra, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Habakkuk, each a
dozen or more feet in height.
Taken as a whole, in spite of their recent discovery, these elaborate
decorations are supposed to have been undertaken by or under the
direction of the bishops who held the see from 1280 to 1324; most likely
under Hugo Geraldi (1312-16), the friend of Pope Clement V. and of the
King of France. This churchman was burned to death at Avignon, and the
see was afterward administered by procuration by Guillaume de Labroa
(1316-1324), who lived at Avignon.
It is then permissible to think that these wall-paintings of the
cathedral at Cahors are perhaps unique in France. Including its
sustaining wall, one of the cupolas rises to a height of eighty-two
feet, and the other to one hundred and five feet.
The north portal is richly sculptured; and the choir, with its
fifteenth-century ogival chapels, has been rebuilt from the original
work of 1285.
The interior, since the recently discovered frescoes of the cupolas,
presents an exceedingly rich appearance, though there are actually few
decorative constructive elements.
The apse of the choir is naturally pointed, as its era would indicate,
and its chapels are ornamented with frescoes of the time of Louis XII.;
neither very good nor very bad, but in no way comparable to the
decorations of the cupolas.
The only monument of note in the interior is the tomb of Bishop Alain de
Solminiac (seventeenth century).
The paintings of the choir are supposed to date from 1315, which
certainly places them at a very early date. A doorway in the right of
the nave gives on the fifteenth-century cloister, which, though
fragmentary, must at one time have been a very satisfactory example. The
ancient episcopal palace is now the prefecture. The bishop originally
bore the provisional title of Count of Cahors, and was entitled to wear
a sword and gauntlets, and it is recorded that he was received, upon his
accession to the diocese, by the Vicomte de Sessac, who, attired in a
grotesque garb, conducted him to his palace amid a ceremony which to-day
would be accounted as buffoonery pure and simple. From the accounts of
this ceremony, it could not have been very dignified or inspiring.
The history of Cahors abounds in romantic incident, and its capture by
Henry of Navarre in 1580 was a brilliant exploit.
Cahors was the birthplace of one of the French Popes of Avignon, John
XXII. (who is buried in Notre Dame des Doms at Avignon).
XI
ST. CAPRAIS D'AGEN
Agen, with Cahors, Tulle, Limoges, Périgueux, Angoulême, and Poitiers,
are, in a way, in a class of themselves with respect to their
cathedrals. They have not favoured aggrandizement, or even restoration
to the extent of mitigating the sentiment which will always surround a
really ancient fabric.
The cathedral at Bordeaux came strongly under the Gothic spell; so did
that at Clermont-Ferrand, and St. Nazaire, in the Cité de Carcassonne.
But those before-mentioned did not, to any appreciable extent, come
under the influence of the new style affected by the architects of the
Isle of France during the times of Philippe-Auguste (d. 1223).
At the death of Philippe le Bel (1314), the royal domain was
considerably extended, and the cathedrals at Montpellier, Carcassonne,
and Narbonne succumbed and took on Gothic features.
The diocese of Agen was founded in the fourth century as a suffragan of
Bordeaux. Its first bishop was St. Phérade. To-day the diocese is still
under the parent jurisdiction of Bordeaux, and the see comprises the
department of Lot-et-Garonne.
A former cathedral church--St. Etienne--was destroyed at the Revolution.
The Romanesque cathedral of St. Caprais dates, as to its apses and
transepts, from the eleventh century.
Its size is not commonly accredited great, but for a fact its nave is
over fifty-five feet in width; greater than Chartres, and nearly as
great as Amiens in the north.
This is a comparison which will show how futile it is not to take into
consideration the peers, compeers, or contemporaries of architectural
types when striving to impress its salient features upon one's senses.
This immense vault is covered with a series of cupolas of a modified
form which finally take the feature of the early development of the
ogival arch. This, then, ranks as one of the early transitions between
barrel-vaulted and domed roofs, and the Gothic arched vaulting which
became so common in the century following.
As to the general ground-plan, the area is not great. Its Romanesque
nave is stunted in length, if not in width, and the transepts are
equally contracted. The choir is semicircular, and the general effect is
that of a tri-apsed church, seldom seen beyond the immediate
neighbourhood of the Rhine valley.
The interior effect is considerably marred by the modern mural frescoes
by Bézard, after a supposed old manner. The combination of colour can
only be described as polychromatic, and the effect is not good.
There are a series of Roman capitals in the nave, which are of more
decided artistic worth and interest than any other distinct feature.
At the side of the cathedral is the _Chapelle des Innocents_, the
ancient chapter-house of St. Caprais, now used as the chapel of the
college. Its façade has some remarkable sculptures, and its interior
attractions of curiously carved capitals and some tombs--supposed to
date from the first years of the Christian era--are of as great interest
as any of the specific features of the cathedral proper.
XII
STE. MARIE D'AUCH
The first bishop of Auch was Citerius, in the fourth century.
Subsequently the Province d'Auch became the see of an archbishop, who
was Primate of Aquitaine. This came to pass when the office was
abolished or transferred from Eauze in the eighth century. The diocese
is thus established in antiquity, and endures to-day with suffragans at
Aire, Tarbes, and Bayonne.
The cathedral of Ste. Marie d'Auch is not of itself an ancient
structure, dating only from the late fifteenth century. Its choir,
however, ranks among the most celebrated in the Gothic style in all
Europe, and the entire edifice is usually accorded as being the most
thoroughly characteristic (though varied as to the excellence of its
details) church of the _Midi_ of France, though built at a time when the
ogival style was projecting its last rays of glory over the land.
[Illustration: STE. MARIE _d'AUCH_]
In its general plan it is of generous though not majestic proportions,
and is rich and aspiring in its details throughout.
An ancient altar in this present church is supposed to have come from
the humble basilica which was erected here by St. Taurin, bishop of
Eauze, soon after the foundation of the see. If this is so, it is
certainly of great antiquity, and is exceedingly valuable as the record
of an art expression of that early day.
Taurin II., in 845, rebuilt a former church, which stood on the site of
the present cathedral; but, its dimensions not proving great enough for
the needs of the congregation, St. Austinde, in 1048, built a much
larger church, which was consecrated early in the twelfth century.
Various other structures were undertaken, some completed only in part
and others to the full; but it was not until 1548 that the present Ste.
Marie was actually consecrated by Jean Dumas.
"This gorgeous ceremony," says the Abbé Bourassé, "was accomplished amid
great pomp on the anniversary day of the dedication of the
eleventh-century basilica on the same site."
In 1597 further additions were made to the vaulting, and the fine choir
glass added. Soon after this time, the glass of the nave chapels was put
into place, being the gift of Dominique de Vic. The final building
operations--as might be expected--show just the least suspicion of
debasement. This quality is to be remarked in the choir-screen, the
porch and towers, and in the balustrades of the chapels, to say nothing
of the organ supports.
The west front is, in part, as late as the seventeenth century.
In this façade there is an elaborately traceried rose window, indicating
in its painted glass a "Glory of Angels." It is not a great work, as
these chief decorative features of French mediæval architecture go, but
is highly ornate by reason of its florid tracery, and dates, moreover,
from that period when the really great accomplishment of designing in
painted glass was approaching its maturity.
If any feature of remark exists to excite undue criticism, it is that of
a certain incongruity or mixture of style, which, while not widely
separated in point of time, has great variation as to excellence.
In spite of this there is, in the general _ensemble_, an imposing
picturesqueness to which distance lends the proverbial degree of
enchantment.
The warm mouse-coloured cathedral and its archbishop's palace, when seen
in conjunction with the modern ornamental gardens and _escalier_ at the
rear, produces an effect more nearly akin to an Italian composition than
anything of a like nature in France.
It is an _ensemble_ most interesting and pleasing, but as a worthy
artistic effort it does perhaps fall short of the ideal.
The westerly towers are curious heavy works after the "French Classical"
manner in vogue during the reign of Louis XIV. They are not beautiful of
themselves, and quite unexpressive of the sanctity which should surround
a great church.
The portal is richly decorated, and contains statues of St. Roche and
St. Austinde. It has been called an "imitation of the portal of St.
Peter's at Rome," but this is an opinion wholly unwarranted by a
personal acquaintance therewith. The two bear no resemblance except that
they are both very inferior to the magnificent Gothic portals of the
north.
The interior embellishments are as mixed as to style, and of as varied
worth, as those of the exterior.
The painted glass (by a Gascon artist, Arnaud de Moles, 1573) is usually
reckoned as of great beauty. This it hardly is, though of great value
and importance as showing the development of the art which produced it.
The colour is rich,--which it seldom is in modern glass,--but the design
is coarse and crude, a distinction that most modern glass has as well.
_Ergo_, we have not advanced greatly in this art.
The chief feature of artistic merit is the series of one hundred and
thirteen choir-stalls, richly and wonderfully carved in wood. If not the
superior to any others in France, these remarkable examples of
Renaissance woodwork are the equal of any, and demonstrate, once again,
that it was in wood-carving, rather than sculptures in stone, that
Renaissance art achieved its greatest success.
A distinct feature is the disposition made of the accessories of the
fine choir. It is surrounded by an elaborate screen, surmounted by
sculpture of a richness quite uncommon in any but the grander and more
wealthy churches.
Under the reign of St. Louis many of the grand cathedrals and the larger
monastic churches were grandly favoured with this accessory, notably at
Amiens and Beauvais, at Burgos in Spain, and at Canterbury.
Here the elaborate screen was designed to protect the ranges of stalls
and their canopied _dossiers_, and give a certain seclusion to the
chapter and officiants.
Elsewhere--out of regard for the people it is to be presumed--this
feature was in many known instances done away with, and the material of
which it was constructed--often of great richness--made use of in
chapels subsequently erected in the walls of the apside or in the side
aisles of the nave. This is to be remarked at Rodez particularly, where
the reërected _clôture_ is still the show-piece of the cathedral.
The organ _buffet_ is, as usual (in the minds of the local resident), a
remarkably fine piece of cabinet-work and nothing more. One always
qualifies this by venturing the opinion that no one ever really does
admire these overpowering and ungainly accessories.
What triforium there is is squat and ugly, with ungraceful openings, and
the high-altar is a modern work in the pseudo-classic style, quite
unworthy as a work of art.
The five apsidal chapels are brilliant with coloured glass, but
otherwise are not remarkable.
In spite of all incongruity, Ste. Marie d'Auch is one of those
fascinating churches in and about which one loves to linger. It is hard
to explain the reason for this, except that its environment provides the
atmosphere which is the one necessary ingredient to a full realization
of the appealing qualities of a stately church.
The archiepiscopal palace adjoins the cathedral in the rear, and has a
noble _donjon_ of the fourteenth century. Its career of the past must
have been quite uneventful, as history records no very bloody or riotous
events which have taken place within or before its walls.
Fénelon was a student at the College of Auch, and his statue adorns the
Promenade du Fossé.
[Illustration: ST. ETIENNE _de TOULOUSE_]
XIII
ST. ETIENNE DE TOULOUSE
The provincialism of Toulouse has been the theme of many a French writer
of ability,--offensively provincial, it would seem from a consensus of
these written opinions.
"Life and movement in abundance, but what a life!" ... "The native is
saved from coarseness by his birth, but after a quarter of an hour the
substratum shows itself." ... "The working girl is graceful and has the
vivacity of a bird, but there is nothing in her cackle." ... "How much
more beautiful are the stars that mirror themselves in the gutter of the
Rue du Bac." ... "There is a yelp in the accents of the people of the
town."
Contrariwise we may learn also that "the water is fine," "the quays are
fine," and "fine large buildings glow in the setting sun in bright and
softened hues," and "in the far distance lies the chain of the Pyrenees,
like a white bed of watery clouds," and "the river, dressed always in
smiling verdure, gracefully skirts the city."
These pessimistic and optimistic views of others found the contributors
to this book in somewhat of a quandary as to the manner of mood and
spirit in which they should approach this provincial capital.
They had heard marvels of its Romanesque church of St. Saturnin, perhaps
the most perfect and elaborate of any of its kind in all France; of the
curious amalgamated edifice, now the cathedral of St. Etienne, wherein
two distinct church bodies are joined by an unseemly ligature; of the
church of the Jacobins; and of the "seventy-seven religious
establishments" enumerated by Taine.
All these, or less, were enough to induce one to cast suspicion aside
and descend upon the city with an open mind.
Two things one must admit: Toulouse does somewhat approach the gaiety of
a capital, and it _is_ provincial.
Its list of attractions for the visitor is great, and its churches
numerous and splendid, so why carp at the "ape-like manners" of the
corner loafers, who, when all is said, are vastly less in number here
than in many a northern centre of population.
The Musée is charming, both as to the disposition of its parts and its
contents. It was once a convent, and has a square courtyard or promenade
surrounded by an arcade. The courtyard is set about with green shrubs,
and a lofty brick tower, pierced with little arched windows and
mullioned with tiny columns, rises skyward in true conventual fashion.
Altogether the Musée, in the attractiveness of its fabric and the size
and importance of its collections, must rank, for interest to the
tourist, at the very head of those outside Paris itself.
As for the churches, there are many, the three greatest of which are the
cathedral of St. Etienne, St. Saturnin, and the Église des Jacobins; in
all is to be observed the universal application or adoption of _des
matériaux du pays_--bricks.
In the cathedral tower, and in that of the Église des Jacobins, a Gothic
scheme is worked out in these warm-toned bricks, and forms, in contrast
with the usual execution of a Gothic design, a most extraordinary
effect; not wholly to the detriment of the style, but certainly not in
keeping with the original conception and development of "pointed"
architecture.
In 1863 Viollet-le-Duc thoroughly and creditably restored St. Saturnin
at great expense, and by this treatment it remains to-day as the most
perfectly preserved work extant of its class.
It is vast, curious, and in a rather mixed style, though thoroughly
Latin in motive.
It is on the border-line of two styles; of the Italian, with respect to
the full semicircular arches and vaulting of the nave and aisles; the
square pillars destitute of all ornament, except another column standing
out in flat relief--an intimation of the quiet and placid force of their
functions.
With the transition comes a change in the flowered capitals, from the
acanthus to tracery and grotesque animals.
There are five domes covering the five aisles, each with a semicircular
vault. The walls, with their infrequent windows, are very thick.
The delightful belfry--of five octagonal stages--which rises from the
crossing of the transepts, presents, from the outside, a fine and
imposing arrangement. So, too, the chapelled choir, with its apse of
rounded vaults rising in imposing tiers. This fine church is in direct
descent from the Roman manner; built and developed as a simple idea,
and, like all antique and classical work,--approaching purity,--is a
living thing, in spite of the fact that it depicts the sentiment of a
dead and gone past.
It might not be so successfully duplicated to-day, but, considering that
St. Saturnin dates from the eleventh century, its commencement was
sufficiently in the remote past to allow of its having been promulgated
under a direct and vigorous Roman influence.
The brick construction of St. Saturnin and of the cathedral is not of
that justly admired quality seen in the ancient Convent of the Jacobins,
which dates from the thirteenth century. Here is made perhaps the most
beautiful use of this style of mediæval building. It is earlier than the
Pont de Montauban, the churches at Moissac or Lombez, and even the
cathedral at Albi, but much later than the true Romanesque brickwork,
which alternated rows of brick with other materials.
The builders of Gallo-Romain and Merovingian times favoured this earlier
method, but work in this style is seldom met with of a later date than
the ninth century.
The Église of St. Saturnin shows, in parts, brickwork of a century
earlier than the Église des Jacobins, but, as before said, it is not so
beautiful.
When the Renaissance came to deal with _brique_, it did not do so badly.
Certainly the domestic and civil establishments of Touraine in this
style--to particularize only one section--are very beautiful. Why the
revival was productive of so much thorough badness when it dealt with
stone is one of the things which the expert has not as yet attempted to
explain; at least, not convincingly.
The contrasting blend of the northern and southern motive in the hybrid
cathedral at Toulouse will not remain unnoticed for long after the first
sensation of surprise at its curious ground-plan passes off.
Here are seen a flamboyant northern choir and aisles in strange
juxtaposition with a thirteenth-century single vaulted nave, after the
purely indigenous southern manner.
This nave nearly equals in immensity those in the cathedrals of Albi and
Bordeaux. It has the great span of sixty-two feet, necessitating the
employment of huge buttresses, which would be remarkable anywhere, in
order to take the thrust. The unobstructed flooring of this splendid
nave lends an added dignity of vastness. Near the vaulted roof are the
only apertures in the walls. Windows, as one knows them elsewhere, are
practically absent.
[Illustration: _Nave of St. Etienne de Toulouse_]
The congregations which assemble in this great aisleless nave present a
curiously animated effect by reason of the fact that they scatter
themselves about in knots or groups rather than crowding against either
the altar-rail or pulpit, occasionally even overflowing into the
adjoining choir. The nave is entirely unobstructed by decorations, such
as screens, pillars, or tombs. It is a mere shell, _sans_ gallery,
_sans_ aisles, and _sans_ triforium.
The development of the structure from the individual members of nave and
choir is readily traced, and though these parts show not the slightest
kind of relationship one to the other, it is from these two fragmentary
churches that the completed, if imperfect, whole has been made.
The west front, to-day more than ever, shows how badly the cathedral has
been put together; the uncovered bricks creep out here and there, and
buildings to the left, which formerly covered the incongruous joint
between the nave and choir, are now razed, making the patchwork even
more apparent. The square tower which flanks the portal to the north is
not unpleasing, and dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The portal is not particularly beautiful, and is bare of decorations of
note. It appears to have been remodelled at some past time with a view
to conserving the western rose window.
There are no transepts or collateral chapels, which tends to make the
ground-plan the more unusual and lacking in symmetry.
The choir (1275-1502) is really very beautiful, taken by itself, far
more so than the nave, from which it is extended on a different axis.
It was restored after a seventeenth-century fire, and is supposed to be
less beautiful to-day than formerly.
There are seventeen chapels in this choir, with much coloured glass of
the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, all with weird polychromatic
decorations in decidedly bad taste.
Toulouse became a bishopric in the third century, with St. Saturnin as
its first bishop. It was raised to the rank of archiepiscopal dignity in
1327, a distinction which it enjoys to-day in company with Narbonne. Six
former suffragan bishoprics, Pamiers, Rieux, Mirepoix, Saint-Papoul,
Lombez, and Lavaur were suppressed at the Revolution.
In the magnificent Musée of the city is _un petit monument_, without an
inscription, but bearing a cross _gammée_ or _Swastika_, and a
palm-leaf, symbols of the divine Apollo and Artemis. It seems curious
that this tiny record in stone should have been found, as it was, in the
mountains which separate the sources of the Garonne and the Adour, as
the _Swastika_ is a symbol supposedly indigenous to the fire and
sun-worshippers of the East, where it figures in a great number of their
monuments.
It is called, by the local antiquary, a Pyrenean altar. If this is so,
it is of course of pagan origin, and is in no way connected with
Christian art.
[Illustration: St. NAZAIRE _de CARCASSONNE_]
XIV
ST. NAZAIRE DE CARCASSONNE
With old and new Carcassonne one finds a contrast, if not as great as
between the hyphenated Hungarian cities of Buda and Pest, at least as
marked in detail.
In most European settlements, where an old municipality adjoins a modern
one, walls have been razed, moats filled, and much general modernization
has been undertaken.
With Carcassonne this is not so; its winding ways, its _culs-de-sacs_,
narrow alleys, and towering walls remain much as they always were, and
the great stronghold of the Middle Ages, vulnerable--as history
tells--from but one point, remains to-day, after its admirable
restoration of roof and capstone, much as it was in the days when modern
Carcassonne was but a scattering hamlet beneath the walls of the older
fortification.
One thing will always be recalled, and that is that a part of the
_enceinte_ of the ancient _Cité_ was a construction of the sixth
century--the days of the Visigoths--and that its subsequent development
into an almost invulnerable fortress was but the endorsement which later
centuries gave to the work and forethought of a people who were supposed
to possess no arts, and very little of ingenuity.
This should suggest a line of investigation to one so minded; while for
us, who regard the ancient walls merely as a boundary which sheltered
and protected a charming Gothic church, it is perhaps sufficient to
recall the inconsistency in many previous estimates as to what great
abilities, if any, the Goths possessed.
If it is true that the Visigoths merely followed Roman tradition, so
much the more creditable to them that they preserved these ancient walls
to the glory of those who came after, and but added to the general plan.
Old and new Carcassonne, as one might call them, in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries had each their own magistrates and a separate
government. The _Cité_, elevated above the _ville_, held also the
garrison, the _presidial_ seat, and the first seneschalship of the
province.
The bishopric of the _Cité_ is not so ancient as the _ville_ itself; for
the first prelate there whose name is found upon record was one Sergius,
"who subscribed to a 'Council' held at Narbonne in 590."
[Illustration: _The Old Cité de Carcassonne before and after the
Restoration_]
St. Hilaire, who founded the abbey at Poitiers, came perhaps before
Sergius, but his tenure is obscure as to its exact date.
The cathedral of St. Michel, in the lower town, has been, since 1803,
the seat of the bishop's throne.
It is a work unique, perhaps, in its design, but entirely unfeeling and
preposterous in its overelaborate decorations. It has a long
parallelogram-like nave, "_entièrement peinte_," as the custodian refers
to it. It has, to be sure, a grand vault, strong and broad, but there
are no aisles, and the chapels which flank this gross nave are mere
painted boxes.
Episcopal dignity demanded that some show of importance should be given
to the cathedral, and it was placed in the hands of Viollet-le-Duc in
1849 for restoration. Whatever his labours may have been, he doubtless
was not much in sympathy with this clumsy fabric, and merely "restored"
it in some measure approaching its twelfth-century form.
It is with St. Nazaire de Carcassonne, the tiny _église_ of the old
_Cité_ and the _ci-devant_ cathedral that we have to do.
This most fascinating church, fascinating for itself none the less than
its unique environment, is, in spite of the extended centuries of its
growth, almost the equal in the purity of its Gothic to that of St.
Urbain at Troyes. And this, in spite of evidences of rather bad joining
up of certain warring constructive elements.
The structure readily composes itself into two distinct parts: that of
the Romanesque (round arch and barrel vault) era and that of the Gothic
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
No consideration of St. Nazaire de Carcassonne is possible without first
coming to a realization of the construction and the functions of the
splendidly picturesque and effective ramparts which enclosed the ancient
_Cité_, its cathedral, châteaux, and various civil and domestic
establishments.
In brief, its history and chronology commences with the Visigoth
foundation, extending from the fifth to the eighth centuries to the time
(1356) when it successfully resisted the Black Prince in his bloody
ravage, by sword and fire, of all of Languedoc.
Legend has it that in Charlemagne's time, after that monarch had
besieged the town for many years and was about to raise the siege in
despair, a certain tower,--which flanked the château,--defended only by
a _Gauloise_ known as _Carcaso_, suddenly gave way and opened a breach
by which the army was at last able to enter.
A rude figure perpetuating the fame of this _Madame Carcaso_--a
veritable Amazon, it would seem--is still seen, rudely carved, over the
Porte Narbonnaise.
[Illustration: _Two Capitals of Pillars in St. Nazaire de Carcassonne;
and the Rude Stone Carving of Carcas_]
It is the inner line of ramparts which dates from the earliest period.
The château, the postern-gate, and most of the interior construction are
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while the outer fortification is
of the time of St. Louis, the latter part of the thirteenth century.
[Illustration: ST. NAZAIRE ... _de CARCASSONNE_]
The Saracens successfully attacked and occupied the city from 713 to
759, but were routed by Pepin-le-Bref. In 1090 was first founded the
strong _vicomtale_ dynasty of the Trencavels. In 1210 the Crusaders,
under Simon de Montfort and the implacable Abbot of Citeaux, laid siege
to the _Cité_, an act which resulted in the final massacre, fifty of the
besieged--who surrendered--being hanged, and four hundred burned alive.
In addition to the walls and ramparts were fifty circular protecting
towers. The extreme length of the inner enclosure is perhaps
three-quarters of a mile, and of the outer nearly a full mile.
It is impossible to describe the magnitude and splendour of these city
walls, which, up to the time of their restoration by Viollet-le-Duc, had
scarcely crumbled at all. The upper ranges of the towers, roof-tops,
ramparts, etc., had become broken, of course, and the sky-line had
become serrated, but the walls, their foundations, and their outline
plan had endured as few works of such magnitude have before or since.
Carcassonne, its history, its romance, and its picturesque qualities,
has ever appealed to the poet, painter, and historian alike.
Something of the halo of sentiment which surrounds this marvellous
fortified city will be gathered from the following praiseful admiration
by Gustave Nadaud:
CARCASSONNE
"'I'm growing old, I've sixty years;
I've laboured all my life in vain;
In all that time of hopes and fears
I've failed my dearest wish to gain;
I see full well that here below
Bliss unalloyed there is for none.
My prayer will ne'er fulfilment know;
I never have seen Carcassonne,
I never have seen Carcassonne!
"'You see the city from the hill--
It lies beyond the mountains blue,
And yet to reach it one must still
Five long and weary leagues pursue,
And, to return, as many more!
Ah! had the vintage plenteous grown,
The grape withheld its yellow store!
I shall not look on Carcassonne,
I shall not look on Carcassonne!
"'They tell me every day is there
Not more nor less than Sunday gay;
In shining robes and garments fair
The people walk upon their way.
One gazes there on castle walls
As grand as those of Babylon,
A bishop and two generals!
I do not know fair Carcassonne,
I do not know fair Carcassonne!
"'The curé's right; he says that we
Are ever wayward, weak, and blind;
He tells us in his homily
Ambition ruins all mankind;
Yet could I there two days have spent,
While the autumn sweetly shone,
Ah, me! I might have died content
When I had looked on Carcassonne,
When I had looked on Carcassonne!
"'Thy pardon, Father, I beseech,
In this my prayer if I offend;
One something sees beyond his reach
From childhood to his journey's end.
My wife, our little boy, Aignan,
Have travelled even to Narbonne,
My grandchild has seen Perpignan,
And I have not seen Carcassonne,
And I have not seen Carcassonne!'
"So crooned one day, close by Limoux,
A peasant double bent with age,
'Rise up, my friend,' said I, 'with you
I'll go upon this pilgrimage.'
We left next morning his abode,
But (Heaven forgive him) half way on
The old man died upon the road;
He never gazed on Carcassonne,
Each mortal has his Carcassonne!"
St. Nazaire is possessed of a Romanesque nave which dates from 1096, but
the choir and transepts are of the most acceptable Gothic forms of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
This choir is readily accounted as a masterwork of elegance, is purely
northern in style and treatment, and possesses also those other
attributes of the _perfectionnement_ of the style--fine glass, delicate
fenestration, and superlative grace throughout, as contrasted with the
heavier and more cold details of the Romanesque variety.
The nave was dedicated by Urbain II., and was doubtless intended for
defence, if its square, firmly bedded towers and piers are suggestive of
that quality. The principal _porte_--it does not rise to the grandeur of
a _portail_--is a thorough Roman example. The interior, with its great
piers, its rough barrel-vault, and its general lack of grace and
elegance, bespeaks its functions as a stronghold. A Romanesque tower in
its original form stands on the side which adjoins the ramparts.
With the choir comes the contrast, both inside and out.
The apside, the transepts, the eleven gorgeous windows, and the extreme
grace of its piers and vaulting, all combine in the fullest expression
of the architectural art of its time.
This admirable Gothic addition was the work of Bishop Pierre de
Rochefort in 1321. The transept chapels and the apse are framed with
light soaring arches, and the great easterly windows are set with
brilliant glass.
In a side chapel is the former tomb of Simon de Montfort, whose remains
were buried here in 1218. At a subsequent time they were removed to
Montfort l'Amaury in the Isle of France. Another remarkable tomb is that
of Bishop Radulph (1266). It shows an unusually elaborate sculptured
treatment for its time, and is most ornate and beautiful.
In the choir are many fine fourteenth-century statues; a tomb with a
sleeping figure, thought to be that of Bishop du Puy of Carcassonne;
statues of the Virgin, St. Nazaire, and the twelve apostles; an
elaborate high-altar; and a pair of magnificent candlesticks, bearing
the arms of Bishop Martin (1522).
An eleventh-century crypt lies beneath the choir. The sacristy, as it is
to-day, was formerly a thirteenth-century chapel.
The organ is commonly supposed to be the most ancient in France. It is
not of ranking greatness as a work of art, but it is interesting to
know that it has some redeeming quality, aside from its conventional
ugliness.
The _tour carrée_, which is set in the inner rampart just in front of
the cathedral, is known as the Bishop's Tower. It is a tower of many
stages, and contains some beautifully vaulted chambers.
The celebrated _tour des Visigoths_, which is near by, is the most
ancient of all.
The entrance to the old _Cité_ is _via_ the Pont Vieux, which is itself
a mediæval twelfth or thirteenth century architectural monument of rare
beauty. In the middle of this old bridge is a very ancient iron cross.
[Illustration]
XV
CATHÉDRALE DE PAMIERS
"Une _petite ville sur la rive droite de l'Ariège, siege d'un évêche_."
These few words, with perhaps seven accompanying lines, usually dismiss
this charming little Pyrenean city, so far as information for the
traveller is concerned.
It is, however, one of these neglected tourist points which the
traveller has ever passed by in his wild rush "across country."
To be sure, it is considerably off the beaten track; so too are its
neighbouring ancient bishoprics of Mirepoix and St. Bertrand de
Comminges, and for that reason they are comparatively unspoiled.
The great and charming attraction of Pamiers is its view of the serrated
ridge of the Pyrenees from the _promenade de Castellat_, just beyond the
cathedral.
For the rest, the cathedral, the fortified _Église de Notre Dame du
Camp_, the ancient _Église de Cordeliers_, the many old houses, and the
general sub-tropical aspect of the country round about, all combine to
present attractions far more edifying and gratifying than the
allurements of certain of the Pyrenean "watering-places."
The cathedral itself is not a great work; its charm, as before said,
lies in its environments.
Its chief feature--and one of real distinction--is its octagonal
_clocher_, in brick, dating from the fourteenth century. It is a
singularly graceful tower, built after the local manner of the _Midi_ of
France, of which St. Saturnin and the Église des Jacobins at Toulouse
are the most notable.
Its base is a broad square machicolated foundation with no openings, and
suggests, as truly as does the tower at Albi, a churchly stronghold
unlikely to give way before any ordinary attack.
In the main, the church is a rebuilt, rather than a restored edifice.
The nave, and indeed nearly all of the structure, except its dominant
octagonal tower, is of the seventeenth century. This work was undertaken
and consummated by Mansart after the manner of that period, and is far
more acceptable than the effect produced by most "restored churches."
The eleventh-century abbey of St. Antoine formed originally the seat of
the throne of the first bishop of Pamiers, Bernard Saisset, in 1297.
XVI
ST. BERTRAND DE COMMINGES
To-day St. Bertrand de Comminges, the ancient _Lugdunum Convenarum_
(through which one traces its communistic foundation), is possessed of
something less than six hundred inhabitants. Remains of the Roman
ramparts are yet to be seen, and its _ci-devant_ cathedral,--of the
twelfth to fourteenth centuries--suppressed in 1790, still dominates the
town from its heights. Arthur Young, writing in the eighteenth century,
describes its situation thus: "The mountains rise proudly around and
give their rough frame to this exquisite little picture."
The diocese grew out of the monkish community which had settled here in
the sixth century, when the prelate Suavis became its first bishop.
To-day the nearest bishop's seat is at Tarbes, in the archbishopric of
Auch.
[Illustration: ST. BERTRAND _de COMMINGES_]
As to architectural style, the cathedral presents what might ordinarily
be called an undesirable mixture, though it is in no way
uninteresting or even unpleasing.
The west front has a curious Romanesque doorway, and there is a
massiveness of wall and buttress which the rather diminutive proportions
of the general plan of the church make notably apparent. Otherwise the
effect, from a not too near view-point, is one of a solidity and
firmness of building only to be seen in some of the neighbouring
fortress-churches.
A tower of rather heavy proportions is to-day capped with a pyramidal
slate or timbered apex after the manner of the western towers at Rodez.
From a distance, this feature has the suggestion of the development of
what may perhaps be a local type of _clocher_. Closer inspections, when
its temporary nature is made plain, disabuses this idea entirely. It is
inside the walls that the great charm of this church lies. It is
elaborately planned, profuse in ornament,--without being in any degree
redundant,--and has a warmth and brilliancy which in most Romanesque
interiors is wanting.
This interior is representative, on a small scale, of that class of
structure whose distinctive feature is what the French architect calls
a _nef unique_, meaning, in this instance, one of those great
single-chambered churches without aisles, such as are found at
Perpignan, new Carcassonne, Lodève, and in a still more amplified form
at Albi.
There are of course no aisles; and for a length of something over two
hundred feet, and a breadth of fifty-five, the bold vault--in the early
pointed style--roofs one of the most attractive and pleasing church
interiors it is possible to conceive.
Of the artistic accessories it is impossible to be too enthusiastic.
There are sixty-six choir-stalls, most elaborately carved in
wood--perhaps mahogany--of a deep rich colouring seldom seen. Numerous
other sculptured details in wood and stone set off with unusual effect
the great and well-nigh windowless side walls.
The organ _buffet_ of Renaissance workmanship--as will naturally be
inferred--is a remarkably elaborate work, much more to be admired than
many of its contemporaries.
Among the other decorative features are an elaborately conceived "tree
of Jesse," an unusually massive rood-loft or _jube_, and a high-altar of
much magnificence.
The choir is surrounded by eleven chapels, showing in some instances
the pure pointed style, and in the latter ones that of the Renaissance.
A fourteenth-century funeral monument of Bishop Hugh de Castillione is
an elaborate work in white marble; while a series of paintings on the
choir walls,--illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand,--though of a
certain crudity, tend to heighten the interest without giving that
effect of the over-elaboration of irrelative details not unfrequently
seen in some larger churches.
At St. Bertrand de Comminges and the cathedrals at Arles, Cavaillon, and
Aix-en-Provence, Elne-en-Roussillon, and Le Puy-en-Velay are
conserved--in a more or less perfect state of preservation--a series of
delightful twelfth-century cloisters. These churches possess this
feature in common with the purely monastic houses, whose builders so
frequently lavished much thought and care on these enclosed and
cloistered courtyards.
As a mere detail--or accessory, if you will,--an ample cloister is
expressive of much that is wanting in a great church which lacks this
contributory feature.
Frequently this part was the first to succumb to the destroying
influence of time, and leave a void for which no amount of latter-day
improvement could make up. Even here, while the cloister ranks as one of
the most beautiful yet to be seen, it is part in a ruinous condition.
[Illustration]
XVII
ST. JEAN-BAPTISTE D'AIRE
This city of the Landes, that wild, bleak region of sand-dunes and
shepherds, abuts upon the more prosperous and fertile territory of the
valley of the Adour. By reason of this juxtaposition, its daily life
presents a series of contrasting elements as quaint and as interesting
as those of the bordering Franco-Spanish cities of Perpignan and
Bayonne.
From travellers in general, and lovers of architecture in particular, it
has ever received but scant consideration, though it is by no means the
desert place that early Victorian writers would have us believe. It is
in reality a well-built mediæval town, with no very lurid events of the
past to its discredit, and, truthfully, with no very marvellous
attributes beyond a certain subtle charm and quaintness which is perhaps
the more interesting because of its unobtrusiveness.
It has been a centre of Christian activity since the days of the fifth
century, when its first bishop, Marcel, was appointed to the diocese by
the mother-see of Auch.
The cathedral of St. Jean-Baptiste belongs to the minor class of
present-day cathedrals, and is of a decidedly conglomerate architectural
style, with no imposing dimensions, and no really vivid or lively
details of ornamentation. It was begun in the thirteenth century, and
the work of rebuilding and restoration has been carried on well up to
the present time.
[Illustration: STS. BENOIT et VINCENT _de CASTRES_]
XVIII
STS. BENOIT ET VINCENT DE CASTRES
Castres will ever rank in the mind of the wayfarer along the byways of
the south of France as a marvellous bit of stage scenery, rather than as
a collection of profound, or even highly interesting, architectural
types.
It is one of those spots into which a traveller drops quite
unconsciously _en route_ to somewhere else; and lingers a much longer
time than circumstances would seem to justify.
This is perhaps inexplicable, but it is a fact, which is only in a
measure accounted for by reason of the "local colour"--whatever that
vague term of the popular novelist may mean--and customs which weave an
entanglement about one which is difficult to resist.
The river Agout is as weird a stream as its name implies, and divides
this haphazard little city of the Tarn into two distinct, and quite
characteristically different, parts.
Intercourse between Castres and its faubourg, Villegondom, is carried on
by two stone bridges; and from either bank of the river, or from either
of the bridges, there is always in a view a ravishingly picturesque
_ensemble_ of decrepit walls and billowy roof-tops, that will make the
artist of brush and pencil angry with fleeting time.
The former cathedral is not an entrancingly beautiful structure; indeed,
it is not after the accepted "good form" of any distinct architectural
style. It is a poor battered thing which has suffered hardly in the
past; notably at the hands of the Huguenots in 1567. As it stands
to-day, it is practically a seventeenth-century construction, though it
is yet unfinished and lacks its western façade.
The vaulting of the choir, and the chapels are the only constructive
elements which warrant remark. There are a few paintings in the choir,
four rather attractive life-size statues, and a series of severe but
elegant choir-stalls.
The former _évêché_ is to-day the Hôtel de Ville, but was built by
Mansart in 1666, and has a fine _escalier_ in sculptured stone.
As a centre of Christianity, Castres is very ancient. In 647 there was
a Benedictine abbey here. The bishopric, however, did not come into
being until 1317, and was suppressed in 1790.
XIX
NOTRE DAME DE RODEZ
The cathedral at Rodez, whose diocese dates from the fifth century and
whose first bishop was St. Amand, is, in a way, reminiscent--in its
majesty of outline and dominant situation--of that at Albi.
It is not, however, after the same manner, but resembles it more
particularly with respect to its west façade, which is unpierced in its
lower stages by either doorway or window.
Here, too, the entrance is midway in its length, and its front presents
that sheer flank of walled barrier which is suggestive of nothing but a
fortification.
[Illustration: NOTRE DAME _de RODEZ_ ...]
This great church--for it is truly great, pure and simple--makes up in
width what it lacks in length. Its nave and aisles are just covered by a
span of one hundred and twenty feet,--a greater dimension than is
possessed by Chartres or Rouen, and nearly as great as Paris or
Amiens.
Altogether Notre Dame de Rodez is a most pleasing church, though
conglomerate as to its architecture, and as bad, with respect to the
Renaissance gable of its façade, as any contemporary work in the same
style.
Rodez lacks, however, the great enfolding tower central of Albi.
This mellow and warm-toned cathedral, from its beginnings in the latter
years of the thirteenth century to the time when the Renaissance cast
its dastardly spell over the genius who inspired its original plan, was
the result of the persevering though intermittent work of three
centuries, and even then the two western towers were left incomplete.
This perhaps was fortunate; otherwise they might have been topped with
such an excrescence as looms up over the doorless west façade.
The Gascon compares the pyramidal roofs which cap either tower--and with
some justness, too--to the pyramids of Egypt, and for that reason the
towers are, to him, the most wonderful in the universe. Subtle humour
this, and the observer will have little difficulty in tracing the
analogy.
Still, they really are preferable, as a decorative feature, to the
tomb-like headboard which surmounts the central gable which they flank.
The ground-plan is singularly uniform, with transepts scarcely
defined--except in the interior arrangements--and yet not wholly absent.
The elaborate tower, called often and with some justification the
_beffroi_, which flanks, or rather indicates, the northerly transept, is
hardly pure as to its Gothic details, but it is a magnificent work
nevertheless.
It dates from 1510, is two hundred and sixty-five feet high, and is
typical of most of the late pointed work of its era. The final stage is
octagonal and is surmounted by a statue of the Virgin surrounded by the
Evangelists. This statue may or may not be a worthy work of art; it is
too elevated, however, for one to decide.
The decorations of the west front, except for the tombstone-like
Renaissance gable, are mainly of the same period as the north transept
tower, and while perhaps ultra-florid, certainly make a fine appearance
when viewed across the _Place d'Armes_.
This west front, moreover, possesses that unusual attribute of a
southern church, an elaborate Gothic rose window; and, though it does
not equal in size or design such magnificent examples as are seen in the
north, at Reims, Amiens, or Chartres, is, after all, a notable detail of
its kind.
The choir, chevet, and apside are of massive building, though not
lacking grace, in spite of the absence of the _arcs-boutants_ of the
best Gothic.
Numerous grotesque gargoyles dot the eaves and gables, though whether of
the spout variety or mere symbols of superstition one can hardly tell
with accuracy when viewed from the ground level.
The north and south portals of the transepts are of a florid nature,
after the manner of most of the decorations throughout the structure,
and are acceptable evidence of the ingenious craft of the stone-carver,
if nothing more.
The workmanship of these details, however, does not rise to the heights
achieved by the architect who outlined the plan and foundation upon
which they were latterly imposed. They are, too, sadly disfigured, the
tympanum in the north portal having been disgracefully ravished.
The interior arrangements are doubly impressive, not only from the
effect of great size, but from the novel colour effect--a sort of dull,
glowing pink which seems to pervade the very atmosphere, an effect which
contrasts strangely with the colder atmosphere of the Gothic churches of
the north. A curious feature to be noted here is that the sustaining
walls of the vault rest directly on piers _sans_ capitals; as effective,
no doubt, as the conventional manner, but in this case hardly as
pleasing.
Two altars, one at either end of nave and choir, duplicate the
arrangement seen at Albi.
The organ _buffet_, too, is of the same massiveness and elaborateness,
and is consequently an object of supreme pride to the local authorities.
It seems difficult to make these useful and necessary adjuncts to a
church interior of the quality of beauty shared by most other
accessories, such as screens, altars, and choir-stalls, which, though
often of the contemporary Renaissance period, are generally beautiful in
themselves. The organ-case, however, seems to run either to size,
heaviness, or grotesqueness, or a combination of all. This is true in
this case, where its great size, and plentifully besprinkled _rococo_
ornament, and unpleasantly dull and dingy "pipes" are of no æsthetic
value whatever. The organ, moreover, occupies the unusual position--in a
French church--of being over the western doorway.
The nave is of extreme height, one hundred and ten feet, and is of
unusual width, as are also the aisles.
The rose window, before remarked, shows well from the inside, though its
glass is not notable.
A series of badly arched lancets in the choir are ungraceful and not in
keeping with the other constructive details. The delicately sculptured
and foliaged screen or _jubé_ at the crossing is a late
fifteenth-century work.
In one of the chapels is now to be seen, in mutilated fragments, the
ancient sixteenth-century _clôture du choeur_. It was a remarkable and
elaborate work of _bizarre_ stone-carving, which to-day has been
reconstructed in some measure approaching its former completeness by the
use of still other fragments taken from the episcopal palace. The chief
feature as to completeness and perfection is the doorway, which bears
two lengthy inscriptions in Latin. The facing of the _clôture_
throughout is covered with a range of pilasters in Arabesque, but the
niches between are to-day bare of their statues, if they ever really
possessed them.
[Illustration: _Choir-stalls, Rodez_]
The choir-stalls and bishop's throne in carved wood are excellent, as
also an elaborately carved wooden _grille_ of a mixed Arabesque and
Gothic design.
There are four other chapel or alcove screens very nearly as elaborate;
all of which features, taken in conjunction one with the other, form an
extensive series of embellishments such as is seldom met with.
Two fourteenth-century monuments to former prelates are situated in
adjoining chapels, and a still more luxurious work of the same
period--the tomb of Gilbert de Cantobre--is beneath an extensive altar
which has supposedly Byzantine ornament of the tenth century.
Rodez was the seat of a bishop (St. Amand) as early as the fifth
century.
Then, as now, the diocese was a suffragan of Albi, whose first bishop,
St. Clair, came to the mother-see in the century previous.
XX
STE. CÉCILE D'ALBI
The cathedral of Ste. Cécile d'Albi is one of the most interesting, as
well as one of the most curious, in all France. It possesses a quality,
rare among churches, which gives it at once the aspect of both a church
and a fortress.
As the representative of a type, it stands at the very head of the
splendid fortress-churches of feudal times. The remarkable disposition
of its plan is somewhat reflected in the neighbouring cathedral at Rodez
and in the church at Esnades, in the Department of the
Charente-Inférieure.
In the severe and aggressive lines of the easterly, or choir, end, it
also resembles the famous church of St. Francis at Assisi, and the
ruined church of Sainte Sophie at Famagousta in the Island of Cyprus.
[Illustration: ST. CÉCILE _d'ALBI_ ...]
It has been likened by the imaginative French--and it needs not so very
great a stretch of the imagination, either--to an immense vessel.
Certainly its lines and proportions somewhat approach such a form; as
much so as those of Notre Dame de Noyon, which Stevenson likened to an
old-time craft with a high poop. A less æsthetic comparison has been
made with a locomotive of gigantic size, and, truth to tell, it is not
unlike that, either, with its advancing tower.
The extreme width of the great nave of this church is nearly ninety
feet, and its body is constructed, after an unusual manner, of a warm,
rosy-coloured brick. In fact the only considerable portions of the
structure not so done are the _clôture_ of the choir, the
window-mullions, and the flamboyant Gothic porch of the south side.
By reason of its uncommon constructive elements,--though by no means is
it the sole representative of its kind in the south of France,--Ste.
Cécile stands forth as the most considerable edifice of its kind among
those which were constructed after this manner of Roman antiquity.
Brickwork of this nature, as is well known, is very enduring, and it
therefore makes much for the lasting qualities of a structure so built;
much more so, in fact, than the crumbling soft stone which is often
used, and which crumbles before the march of time like lead in a
furnace.
Ste. Cécile was begun in 1282, on the ruins of the ancient church of St.
Croix. It came to its completion during the latter years of the
fourteenth century, when it stood much as it does to-day, grim and
strong, but very beautiful.