the Bishop's church. The maritime church on the contrary is nearly
always a Cathedral, with strangely curious legends and episodes. The
French coast of the Mediterranean was the scene of continuous pillage.
Huns, Normans, Moors, Saracens, unknown pirates and free-booters of all
nationalities found it very lucrative and convenient to descend on a
sea-board town, and escape as they had come, easily, their boats loaded
with booty. "As late as the XII century," writes Barr Ferree,
"buccaneers gained a livelihood by preying on the peaceful and
unoffending inhabitants of the villages and cities. The Cathedrals, as
the most important buildings and the most conspicuous, were strongly
fortified, both to protect their contents and to serve as strongholds
for the citizens in case of need. In these churches, therefore,
architecture assumed its most utilitarian form and buildings are real
fortifications, with battlemented walls, strong and heavy towers, and
small windows, and are provided with the other devices of Romanesque
architecture of a purely military type."
[Illustration: "FORTIFIED GOTHIC BUILT IN BRICK."--ALBI.]
"Time has dealt hardly with them. The kingly power, being entrenched in
Paris, developed from the Isle de France. The wealth that once enriched
the fertile lands of the South moved northwards, and the great
commercial cities of the North became the most important centres of
activity. Then the southern towns began to decline," and the
buildings which remain to represent most perfectly the "Church-Fortress"
are not those of Provence, which are "patched" and "restored," but those
of Languedoc, Agde, and Maguelonne, and Elne of the near-by country of
Rousillon.
[Illustration: "A CHURCH FORTRESS."--MAGUELONNE.]
[Sidenote: Gascony.]
Gascony, the last of the southern provinces and the farthest from Rome,
had great prosperity under Imperial dominion. Many patricians emigrated
there, roads were built, commerce flourished, and as in Provence and
Languedoc, towns grew into large and well-established cities.
Christianity made a comparatively early conquest of the province; and
at the beginning of the IV century, eleven suffragan Bishoprics had been
established under the Archbishopric of Eauze. Gascony has many old
Cathedral cities, and has had many ancient Cathedrals; but after the
fall of the Roman Empire in the V century, a series of wars began which
destroyed not only the Christian architecture, but almost every trace of
Roman wealth and culture. Little towers remain, supposed shrines of
Mercury, protector of commerce and travel; pieces of statues are found;
but the Temples, the Amphitheatres, the Forums, have disappeared, and
even more completely, the rude Christian churches of that early period.
Although the province has no Mediterranean coast and could not be
molested by the marauders of that busy sea, it lay directly upon the
route of armies between France and Spain; and it is no "gasconading" to
say that it was for centuries one of the greatest battle-fields of the
South. Vandals, Visigoths, Franks, Saracens, Normans,--Gascons against
Carlovingians, North against South, all had burned, raided, and
destroyed Gascony before the XI century. It is not surprising, then,
that there are found fewer traces of antiquity here than in Provence and
Languedoc. Even the few names of decimated cities which survived,
designated towns on new sites. Eauze, formerly on the Gelise, lay long
in ruins, and was finally re-built a kilometre inland. Lectoure and Auch
had long since retired from the river Gers and taken refuge on the hills
of their present situations, while other cities fell into complete ruin
and forgetfulness.
[Illustration: STATELY GOTHIC SPLENDOUR.--CONDOM.]
The year 1000, which followed these events, was that of the predicted
and expected end of the world. The extravagances of Christians at that
time are well known, the gifts of all property that were made to the
Church, the abandonment of worldly pursuits, the terrors of many, the
anxiety of the calmest, the emotional excesses which led people to live
in trees that they might be near to heaven when the "great trump" should
sound,--"Mundi fine appropinquante." But the trumpet did not sound, and
Raoul Glaber, a monk of the XI century, writes that all over Italy and
the Gaul of his day there was great haste to restore and re-build
churches, a general rivalry between towns and between countries, as to
which could build most remarkably. "This activity," says Quicherat, "may
show a desire to renew alliance with the Creator." It certainly proves
that the generation of the year 1000 had fresh and new architectural
ideas.
This was the period of recuperation and re-building for Gascony. The
monks of the VIII, IX, and X centuries had devoted themselves with zeal
and success to the cultivation of the soil. They had acquired fertile
fields, and desiring peace, they had placed themselves in positions
where their strength would defend them when their holy calling was not
respected. These monasteries were places of refuge and soon gave their
name and their protection to the towns and villages which began to
cluster about them. Except the declining settlements of Roman days,
Gascony had few towns in the X century; and many of her most important
cities of to-day owe their foundation, their existence, and their
prosperity to these Benedictine monasteries. Eauze regained its life
after the establishment of a convent, and in the XI, XII, and XIII
centuries, the Abbots of Citeaux, Bishops, and even lords of the laity,
occupied themselves in the creation of new cities. Many of the towns of
mediaeval creation possessed broad municipal and commercial privileges,
they grew to the importance of "communes" and Bishoprics, and some even
styled themselves "Republics."
Although these were times of much re-building, restoring, and carrying
out of older plans of ecclesiastical architecture, the XI and XII
centuries were none the less filled with innumerable private wars, and
in 1167 began the bloody and persistent struggle with England. The city
of Aire was at one time reduced to twelve inhabitants, and the horrors
of the mediaeval siege were more than once repeated. In these wars,
Cathedrals, as well as towns and their inhabitants, were scarred and
wounded. Hardly had these dissensions ended in 1494, when the Wars of
Religion commenced under Charles IX, and Gascony was again one of the
most terrible fields of battle. Here the demoniac enthusiasm of both
sides exceeded even the terrible exhibitions of Languedoc. The royal
family of Navarre was openly Protestant and contributed more than any
others to the military organisations of their Faith. Jeanne d'Albret, in
1566, wishing to repay intolerance with intolerance, forbade religious
processions and church funerals in Navarre. The people rose, and the
next year the Queen was forced to grant toleration to both religions.
Later the King of France entered the field and sent an army against the
Bearnaise Huguenots, Jeanne, in reprisal, called to her aid Montmorency;
and with a thoroughness born of pious zeal and hatred, each army began
to burn and kill. All monasteries, all churches, were looted by the
Protestants; all cities taken by Montluc, head of the Catholics, were
sacked. Tarbes was devastated by the one, Rabestans by the other, and
the Cathedral of Pamiers was ruined. With the Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew, in 1572, the struggle began again, and the League
flourished in all its malign enthusiasm. "Such disorder as was
introduced," says a writer of the period, "such pillage, has never been
seen since war began. Officers, soldiers, followers, and volunteers were
so overburdened with booty as to be incommoded thereby. And after this
brigandage, the peasants hereabouts [Bigorre] abandoned their very farms
from lack of cattle, and the greater number went into Spain."
During long centuries of such religious and political devastation the
architectural energy of Gascony was expended in replacing churches which
had been destroyed, and were again to be destroyed or injured. It would
be unfair to expect of this province the great magnificence which its
brave, cheerful, and extravagant little people believe it "once
possessed," or to look, amid such unrest, for the calm growth of any
architectural style. It is a country of few Cathedrals, of curious
churches built for war and prayer, and of such occasional outbursts of
magnificence as is seen in the Romanesque portal of Saint-Pierre of
Moissac and in the stately Gothic splendour of the Cathedrals at Condom
and at Bayonne. It is a country where Cathedrals are surrounded by the
most beautiful of landscapes, and where each has some legend or story of
the English, the League, of the Black Prince, or the Lion-hearted, of
Henry IV, still adored, or of Simon de Montfort, still execrated, where
the towns are truly historic and the mountains truly grand.
Provence.
I.
THE CATHEDRALS OF THE SEA.
[Sidenote: Marseilles.]
Perhaps a Phoenician settlement, certainly a Carthaginian mart, later a
Grecian city, and in the final years of the pagan era possessed by the
Romans, no city of France has had more diverse influences of antique
civilisation than Marseilles, none responded more proudly to its ancient
opportunities; and not only was it commercially wealthy and renowned,
but so rich in schools that it was called "another, a new Athens." It
was also the port of an adventurous people, who founded Nice, Antibes,
la Ciotat, and Agde, and explored a part of Africa and Northern Europe;
and at the fall of the Roman Empire it became, by very virtue of its
riches and safe harbour, the envy and the prey of a succession of
barbaric and "infidel" invaders. In the Middle Ages it had all the
vicissitudes of wars and sieges to which a great city could be
subjected. It had a Viscount, and from very early days, a Bishop; it was
at one time part of the Kingdom of Arles; and later it recognised the
suzerainty of the Counts of Provence. When these lords were warring or
crusading, it took advantage of their absence or their troubles and
governed itself through its Consuls; became a Provencal Republic after
the type of the Italian cities and other towns of the Mediterranean
country; treated with the Italian Republics on terms of perfect
equality; and although finally annexed to France by the wily Louis of
the Madonnas, its people were continually haunted by memories of their
former independence, and not only struggled for municipal rights and
liberties, but took sides for or against the most powerful monarchs of
continental history as if they had been a resourceful country rather
than a city. It succored the League, defied Henry IV and Richelieu; and
treating Kings in trouble as cavalierly as declining Counts, Marseilles
tried at the death of Henry III to secede from France and recover its
autonomy under a Consul, Charles de Cazaulx. Promptly defeated, it still
continued to think independently, and struggle, as best it might, for
freedom of administration; and although from the time of Pompey to that
of Louis XIV it has had an ineradicable tendency to stand against the
government, it has survived the results of all its contumacies, its
plagues, wars, and sieges, and the destructiveness of its phase of the
Revolution, when it had a Terror of its own. Notwithstanding modern
rivals in the Mediterranean, Marseilles is to-day one of the largest and
most prosperous of French cities. Built in amphitheatre around the bay,
it is beautiful in general view, its streets bustle with commercial
activity, and its vast docks swarm with workmen. The storms of the past
have gone over Marseilles as the storms of nature over its sea, have
been as passionate, and have left as little trace. Instead of Temples,
Forum, and Arena, there are the Palais de Longchamps, the Palais de
Justice, and the Christian Arch of Triumph. Instead of the muddy and
unhealthy alley-ways of Mediaevalism, there are broad streets and wide
boulevards, and in spite of its antiquity Marseilles is a city of
to-day, in monuments, aspect, spirit, and even in class distinction.
"Here," writes Edmond About, "are only two categories of people, those
who have made a fortune and those who are trying to make one, and the
principal inhabitants are parvenus in the most honourable sense of the
word."
[Illustration: _Entrevaux._
People gather around the mail-coach as it makes its daily halt before
the drawbridge.]
[Illustration: THE NEW CATHEDRAL.--MARSEILLES.]
"In the most honourable sense of the word," the Cathedral of Marseilles
is also typical of the city, "parvenue." Its first stone was placed by
Prince Louis Napoleon in 1852, and as the modern has overgrown the
classic and mediaeval greatness of Marseilles, so the new "Majeure" has
eclipsed, if it has not yet entirely replaced, the old Cathedral; and
except the stern Abbey-church of Saint-Victor, an almost solitary relic
of true mediaeval greatness, it is the finest church of the city.
The new Cathedral and the old stand side by side; the one strong and
whole, the other partly torn down, scarred and maimed as a veteran who
has survived many wars. Even in its ruin, it is an interesting type of
the maritime Provencal church, but so pitiably overshadowed by its
successor that the charm of its situation is quite lost, and few will
linger to study its three small naves, the defaced fresco of the dome,
or even the little chapel of Saint-Lazare, all white marble and carving
and small statues, scarcely more than a shallow niche in the wall, but
daintily proportioned, and a charming creation of the Renaissance. Fewer
still of those who pause to study what remains of the old "Majeure,"
will stay to reconstruct it as it used to be, and realise that it had
its day of glory no less real than that of the new church which replaces
it. In its stead, Saint-Martin's, and Saint-Cannat's sometimes called
"the Preachers," have been temporarily used for the Bishop's services.
But now that the greater church, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, has been practically completed, it has assumed, once and for all,
the greater rank, and a Cathedral of Marseilles still stands on its
terrace in full view of the sea. Tradition has it that a Temple of Baal
once stood on this site and later, a Temple to Diana; that Lazarus came
in the I century, converted the pagan Marseillais and built a Christian
Cathedral here. A more critical tradition says that Saint Victor first
came as missionary, Bishop, and builder. All these vague memories of
conversion, more or less accurate, all the legends of an humble and
struggling Christianity, seem buried by this huge modern mass. It is not
a church struggling and militant, but the Church Established and
Triumphant. It is a vast building over four hundred and fifty feet long,
preceded by two domed towers. Its transepts are surmounted at the
crossing by a huge dome whose circumference is nearly two hundred feet,
a smaller one over each transept arm, and others above the apsidal
chapels. The exterior is built with alternate layers of green Florentine
stone and the white stone of Fontvieille; and the style of the church,
variously called French Romanesque, Byzantine, and Neo-Byzantine, is
very oriental in its general effect.
An arcade between the two towers forms a porch, the entrance to the
interior whose central nave stretches out in great spaciousness. The
lateral naves, in contrast, are exceedingly narrow and have high
galleries supported by large monolithic columns. These naves are
prolonged into an ambulatory, each of whose chapels, in consonance with
the Cathedral's colossal proportions, is as large as many a church. The
building stone of the interior is grey and pink, with white marble used
decoratively for capitals and bases; and these combinations of tints
which would seem almost too delicate, too effeminate, for so large a
building, are made rich and effective by their very mass, the gigantic
sizes which the plan exacts. All that artistic conception could produce
has been added to complete an interior that is entirely oriental in its
luxury of ornamentation, half-oriental in style, and without that sober
majesty which is an inherent characteristic of the most elaborate styles
native to Western Christianity. Under the gilded dome is a rich
baldaquined High Altar, and through the whole church there is a
magnificence of mosaics, of mural paintings, and of stained glass that
is sumptuous. Mosaics line the arches of the nave and the pendentives,
and form the flooring; and in the midst of this richness of colour the
grey pillars rise, one after the other in long, shadowy perspective,
like the trees of a stately grove.
In planning this new Provencal Cathedral its architects did not attempt
to reproduce, either exactly or in greater perfection, any maritime type
which its situation on the Mediterranean might have suggested, nor were
they inspired by any of the models of the native style; and perhaps, to
the captious mind, its most serious defect is that its building has
destroyed not only an actual portion of the old Majeure, but an historic
interest which might well have been preserved by a wise restoration or
an harmonious re-building. And yet, with the large Palace of the
Archbishop on the Port de la Joliette near-by, the statue of a devoted
and loving Bishop in the open square, and the majestic Cathedral of
Sainte-Marie-Majeure itself, the episcopacy of Marseilles has all the
outward and visible signs of strength and glory and power.
[Sidenote: Toulon.]
Toulon, although a foundation of the Romans, owes its rank to-day to
Henry IV, to Richelieu, and to Louis XIV's busy architect, Vauban. It is
the "Gibraltar of France," a bright, bustling, modern city.
Sainte-Marie-Majeure, one of its oldest ecclesiastical names, is a title
which belonged to churches of both the XI and XII centuries; but in the
feats of architectural gymnastics to which their remains have been
subjected, and in the wars and vicissitudes of Provence, these buildings
have long since disappeared.
A few stones still exist of the XI century structure, void of form or
architectural significance, and the ancient name of Sainte-Marie-Majeure
now protects a Cathedral built in the most depressing style of the
industrious Philistines of the XVII and XVIII centuries. It is not a
Provencal nor a truly "maritime" church, it is not a fortress nor a
defence, nor a work of any architectural beauty. It has blatancy, size,
pretension,--a profusion of rich incongruities; and although religiously
interesting from its chapels and shrines, it is architecturally
obtrusive and monstrous.
The vagaries of the architects who began in 1634 to construct the
present edifice, are well illustrated in the changes of plan to which
they subjected this unfortunate church. The length became the breadth,
the isolated chapel of the Virgin, part of the main building; the choir,
another chapel; and the High Altar was removed from the eastern to the
northern end, where a new choir had been built for its reception. This
confusion of plan was carried out with logical confusion of style and
detail. The facade has Corinthian columns of the XVII century; the nave
is said to be "transition Gothic," the choir is decorated with mural
paintings, and the High Altar, a work of Revoil, adds to the banalities
of the XVII and XVIII centuries a rich incongruity of which the XIX has
no reason to be proud. The whole interior is so full of naves of unequal
length, and radiating chapels, of arches of differing forms, tastes, and
styles, that it defies concise description and is unworthy of serious
consideration. Provence has modest Cathedrals of small architectural
significance, but except Sainte-Reparate of Nice, it has none so chaotic
and commonplace as Sainte-Marie-Majeure of Toulon.
[Sidenote: Frejus.]
Frejus, which claims to be "the oldest city in France," was one of the
numerous trading ports of the Phoenician, and later, during the period
of her civic grandeur, an arsenal of the Roman navy. Her most
interesting ruins are the Coliseum, the Theatre, the old Citadel, and
the Aqueduct, suggestions of a really great city of the long-gone past.
Frejus lost prestige with the decadence of the Empire, and after a
destruction by the Saracens in the X century, Nature gave the blow which
finally crushed her when the sea retreated a mile, and her old Roman
light-house was left to overlook merely a long stretch of barren, sandy
land. Owing to this stranded, inland position, she has escaped both the
dignity of a modern sea-port and the prostitution of a Rivieran resort,
and is a little dead city, the seat of an ancient Provencal "Cathedral
of the Sea." This Cathedral is largely free from XVII and XVIII century
disfigurements; and the pity is that having escaped this, a French
church's imminent peril, it should have become so built around that the
character of the exterior is almost lost. The facade is severely plain,
an uninteresting re-building of 1823, but the carved wood of its portals
is beautiful. The towers, as in other maritime Cathedrals of Provence,
recall the perils and dangers of their days; and these towers of Frejus,
although none the less practically defensive, have a more churchly
appearance than those of Antibes, Grasse, and Vence. Over the vestibuled
entrance rises the western tower. Its heavy, rectangular base is the
support of a super-structure which was replaced in the XVI century by
one more in keeping with conventional ecclesiastical models. Then the
windows of the base, whose rounded arches are still traceable, were
walled in; and the new octagonal stage with high windows of its own was
completed by a tile-covered spire. The more interesting tower is that
which surmounts the apse. This was the lookout, facing the sea, the
really vital defence of the church. Its upper room was a storage place
for arms and ammunition, and on the side which faces the city was open,
with a broad, pointed arch. Above, the tower ends in machiolated
battlements and presents a very strong and stern front seaward, perhaps
no stronger, but more artistic and grim than towers of other Provencal
Cathedrals.
The entrance of the church is curiously complicated. To the left is the
little baptistery; directly before one, a narrow stairway which leads to
the Cloister; and on the right, a low-arched vestibule which opens into
the nave of the Cathedral. The interior of Saint-Etienne is dark and
somewhat gloomy, but that is an inherent trait of a fortress-church, for
every added inch of window-opening brought an ell of danger. The nave is
unusually low and broad, and its buttressed piers are of immense weight,
ending severely in a plain, moulded band. On these great piers rest the
cross-vaults of the roof and the broad arches of the wall. The north
aisle, disproportionately narrow, is a later addition. Behind the altar
is a true Provencal apse, shallow and rectangular, and beyond its
rounded roof opens the smaller half-dome. Architecturally, this is an
interesting interior; but the traveller who has not time to spend in
musings will fail to see it in its original intention;--cold, severely
plain, heavy, with perhaps too many arch-lines, but sober and simple. A
futile wooden wainscot now surrounds the church and breaks its wall
space, liberal coats of whitewash conceal the building material, and
taking from the church the severity of its stone, give it an appearance
of poor deprecatory bareness.
[Illustration: "THE DESECRATION OF THE LITTLE CLOISTER."--FREJUS.]
Near the entrance of the Cathedral is its most ancient portion, the
baptistery, formerly a building apart, but now an integral part of the
church itself. It is perhaps the most interesting Christian monument in
Frejus, a reminder of those early centuries when, in France as in Italy,
the little baptistery was the popular form of Christian architectural
expression. Here it has the very usual octagonal shape; the arches are
upheld by grayish columns of granite with capitals of white marble, and
in the centre stands the font. Between the columns are small
recesses, alternately rectangular and semi-domed, and above all, is a
modern dome and lantern. Structurally interesting, and reminiscent of
the stately baptistery of Aix, the effect of this little chamber, like
the church's interior, is marred by the whitewashes from whose
industrious brushes nothing but the grayish columns have escaped. And
here again, the traveller who would see the builders' work, free from
the disfigurements of time, must pause and imagine.