Provencal exteriors to be without definite or logical proportions. A
large, square tower, heavier than that of Grasse, served as a lookout, a
tall, thin little turret served as a belfry. In the facade there is a
Gothic portal which notwithstanding its entire mediocrity is the chief
adornment of the outer walls. They are irregular and uncouth to a degree
and their only interesting features are at the eastern end. Here the
smaller, older apses on either side betray the church's early origin.
The central apse, evidently of the same dimensions as the Romanesque one
originally designed, was re-built in severe, rudimentary Gothic. Looking
at this shallow apse alone, and following its plain lines until they
meet those of the big tower, there is a straight simplicity that is
almost fine,--but this is one mere detail in a large and barren whole,
and the Cathedral-seeker turns to the nearest entrance.
[Illustration: "A LARGE, SQUARE TOWER SERVED AS A
LOOKOUT."--FORCALQUIER.]
[Illustration: "A SUGGESTIVE VIEW FROM THE SIDE AISLE."--FORCALQUIER.]
The first glimpse of the interior is so relieving that one is not quick
to notice its lack of architectural unity. The few windows give a soft
light, and the brown of the stone has a mellowness that is both rich and
reposeful. If the Cathedral could have been finished in the style of the
first bays of the nave, it would have been a nobly dignified example of
the Romanesque. Could it have been re-built in the slender Gothic of the
last bay, it would have been an exquisite example of Provencal Gothic.
Rather largely planned, its old form of tunnel vaulting and the fine
curve of its nave arches and heavy piers are in violent contrast to the
Gothic bay, with its pointed arch, its clustered columns and carved
capitals, which, even with the shallow choir and its long, slim windows,
is too slight a portion of the Cathedral to have independence or real
beauty. From its ritualistic position, it is the culminating point of
the church, and its discord with the Romanesque is unpleasantly
insistent. The side aisles, which were built in the XVII century, are
low, agreeable walks ending in the chapels of the smaller apses. They
are neither very regular nor very significant; but they give the church
pleasant size and perspectives, and by avoiding the unduly large and
shining modern chandeliers which hang between the nave arches, one gets
from these side aisles the suggestive views which show only too well
what true and good architectural ideas were brought to confusion in the
re-building, the additions, and the restorations of the centuries. In
painting, anachronisms may be quaint or even amusing; but in
architecture, they are either grotesque or tragic, and in a church of
such fine suggestiveness as Notre-Dame at Forcalquier, one is haunted by
lingering regrets for what might and should have been.
[Sidenote: Vence.]
A founder of the French Academy and one of its first immortal forty was
Antoine Godeau, "the idol of the Hotel Rambouillet." His mind was
formed, as it were, by one of the most clever women of that brilliantly
foolish coterie, he sang frivolous sonnets to a beautiful red-haired
mistress whom he sincerely admired, and when he entered Holy Church,
none of his charming friends believed that he would do more than modify
the proper and agreeable conventionalities of his former life. They
thought that he would add to the grace of his worldly manner the suavity
of the ecclesiastic, that he would choose a pulpit of Paris, and that,
sitting at his feet, they could enjoy the elegant phrases with which he
would embellish a refined and delicately attenuated religion. But an
aged prelate of the far South judged the new priest differently, he had
sounded the heart of the man who, at the age of thirty, had quietly
renounced a flattering, admiring world; and his dying prayer to
Richelieu was that Godeau should succeed him in the See of Vence. The
keen worldly wisdom of the Cardinal confirmed the old Bishop's more
spiritual insight, and Godeau was named Bishop of the neighbouring
Grasse.
Far away in his mountain-city of flower gardens and sweet odours, the
new Bishop wrote to his Parisian friends that, for his part, he "found
more thorns than orange-blossoms." The Calvinists, from the rock of
Antibes, openly defied him; in spite of the vehement opposition of their
Chapters and against his will, the Bishoprics of Grasse and Vence were
united, and he was made the Bishop of the two warring, discontented
Sees. He was stoned at Vence; and even his colleague in temporal power,
the Marquis of Villeneuve, showed himself as insolent as he dared. At
length the King came to his aid, and being given his choice of the Sees,
Godeau immediately left "the perfumed wench," as he called Grasse, and
chose to live and work among his one-time enemies of Vence. This gentle
and courageous prelate is typical of the long line of wise men who ruled
the Church in the tight little city of the Provencal hills. From Saint
Veran the wonder-worker, and Saint Lambert the tender nurse of lepers,
to the end, they were men noted for bravery, goodness, and learning, and
it was not till the Revolution that one was found--and fittingly the
last--who, hating the "Oath" and fearing the guillotine, fled his See.
This city of good Bishops was founded in the dim, pagan past of Gaul.
From a rocky hill-top, its inhabitants had watched the burning of their
first valley-town and they founded the second Vence on that height of
safety to which they had escaped with their lives. Here, far above the
Aurelian road, the Gallic tribes had a strong and isolated camp. Then
the prying Romans found them out, and priests of Mars and Cybele
replaced those of the cruder native gods, and they, in turn, gave way to
the apostle of the Christians. Where a temple stood, a church was built;
and unlike many early saints who looked upon old pagan images as homes
of devils and broke them into a thousand pieces with holy wrath and
words of exorcism, the prelate of Vence buried an image of a vanquished
god under each and every pillar of his church, in sign of Christian
triumph.
These early days of the Faith were days of growth for the little city,
and she prospered in her Mediaevalism. High on her hill, she was too
difficult of access to suffer greatly from marauding foes, and hidden
from the sea, she did not excite the cupidity of the Mediterranean
rovers. When Antibes and Nice were sacked, her little ledge of rock was
safe; and people crowded thick and fast behind her walls, until no
bee-hive swarmed so thick with bees as her few streets with citizens.
Here were arts and occupations, burghers and charters, riches and
liberties. Here came the Renaissance, and Vence had eager, if not famous
sculptors, painters, and organ-builders, and a family of artists whom
even the dilettante Francis I deigned to patronise.
Such memories of a busy, energetic past seem fairy-tales to those who
walk to-day about the dark and narrow streets of Vence. She scarcely has
outgrown her ancient walls, her civic life is dead, and in her virtual
isolation from the modern world she lives a dreary, quiet old age.
The old Cathedral, Notre-Dame, lies in the heart of the town; and takes
one back along the years, far past the Renaissance, to those grim
mediaeval days when even churches were places of defence. It is a low,
unimpressive building, said to have been built on the site of the Roman
Temple in the IV century. Enlarged or re-built in the X century, it was
then long and narrow, a Latin cross. But in the XII century, deep, dark
bays were added; in the XV, tribunes were built, the form of the apse
was changed to an oval and it was decorated in an inharmonious style;
and a hundred years ago the nave vault was re-built in an ellipse.
[Illustration: "THE OLD ROUND ARCH OF THE BISHOP'S PALACE."--VENCE.]
In the side wall there is a low portal of a late, decadent style, which
opens on the little square, but there is no real facade; and to see the
church, the traveller passed under the old round arch of the Bishop's
Palace, through a small, damp street to another tinier square where the
apse and tower stand. The little Cathedral-churches of Provence are
always simply built, but here a rectangle, a low gabled roof, a small,
round-headed window in the wall, would have been architectural bareness
if a high, straight tower had not crowned it all. This crenellated tower
is a true type of its time, square, yet slim and strong, and crudely
graceful as some tall young poplar of the plains beneath. In the XI and
XII centuries, its early days, it was the city's lookout. Families lived
high up in its walls, and the traveller could imagine, in this little
old, deserted square, the crowds who gathered round the tower's base,
and called for news of enemies and battle as moderns gather about the
more prosaic bulletin of printed news. He could see them surging,
peering up; and from above he almost heard the watcher's cry, "They're
coming on,"--with the great answering howl beneath, and the rush to
arms. Or, "They pass us by," and then what breaking into little laughing
groups, what joy, what dancing, and what praying, that lasted far into
the evening hours.
[Illustration: "THE LOW, BROAD ARCHES AND THE GREAT, SUPPORTING
PILLARS."--VENCE.]
The traveller came back in thought to modern times and went into the
church, that church of five low naves and many restorations, that
product of most diverse fancies. It is painted in lugubrious white, and
its pillars have false bases in a palpable imitation of veined red
marble. Its pure and early form, the Latin cross, is gone, its fine old
stalls are hidden in a gallery, and at the altar Corinthian columns
desecrate its ancient Romanesque. Yet in spite of the incongruities the
atmosphere of the church is truly that of its dim past. There are the
low broad arches, the great, supporting pillars that are massive
buttresses; there is the simple practicality of a style that aimed at a
protecting strength rather than at any art of beauty; there is the
semi-darkness of the small, safe windows, and the little, guarded space
where the praying few increased a thousand-fold in times of danger. This
is, in spite of all defects, the small Provencal church where in days of
peace cloudy incense slowly circled round the shadowy forms of chanting
priests, and where in times of war a crowd of frightened women and their
children prayed in safety for the men who sallied forth to fight in
their defence.
[Sidenote: Grasse.]
He who is unloving of the past may well rush by its treasures in a
puffing automobile, he who is bored by olden thoughts can hurry on by
rail, but the man who wishes to know the old hill-towns of France, to
see them as they seemed to their makers, and realise their one-time
magnificence and strength, must walk from one town to the next, and
climb their steep heights; must see great towers rise before him, great
walls loom above him, and realise how grandly strong these places were
when it was man to man and sword to sword, strength against strength. He
must arrive, dust-covered, at the cities' gates or drive into their
narrow streets on the small coach which still passes through,--for they
are of the times when great men rode and peasants walked and steam was
all unknown. Then he will realise how very large the world once was, how
far from town to town; and once within those high, protecting walls, he
will understand why the citizen of mediaeval days found in his town a
world sufficient to itself, and why he was so often well content to
spend his life at home.
The power and the force of an isolated, self-concentrated interest is
well illustrated in the history of the free cities of the Middle Ages,
and Grasse may be counted one of these. Counts she had in name; but the
Berengers and Queen Jeanne had granted her charters which she had the
power to keep; she was once wealthy enough to declare war with Pisa, and
in the XII century the leaders of her self-government were "Consuls by
the grace of God alone." Therefore when Antibes continued to be greatly
menaced by blasphemous pirates, the Bishopric was removed to Grasse,
rich, strong, and safe behind the hills, where it endured from 1244,
through all the perils of the centuries, until by a pen-stroke Napoleon
wiped it out in 1801.
[Illustration: "HIGHER THAN THEM ALL STANDS THE CATHEDRAL."--GRASSE.]
To come to Grasse on foot or in the stage, will well repay the traveller
of old-fashioned moods and fancies. Afar, her houses seem to crowd
together, as they used to crowd within the walls, her red roofs rise
fantastically one above the other, and higher than them all stands the
Cathedral with its firm, square tower. Such must have been old Grasse,
perched on the summit of her hill. But once inside the town, these
illusions cease. Here are the hotels and the Casino of a thermal
station, and the factories of a new world. The traveller finds that the
broad upper boulevards are filled with tourists and smart English
visitors; and in the narrow streets pert factory-hands come noisily from
work. Still he climbs on toward the Cathedral, through tortuous streets
and little alley-ways. And in the gloomiest of them all there is no
odour of a stale antiquity, but the perfume of a garden-full of roses,
of a thousand orange-blossoms, and of locusts, honey-sweet, and he
begins to think himself enchanted. He feels the dark, old houses are
unreal, as if, instead of cobble-stones beneath his feet, there must be
the soft and tender grass of Araby the Blest. Such is the magic of a
trade, the perfume industry of Grasse that for so many hundreds of years
has made her meanest streets full of refreshing fragrance.
Breathless from the climb, the traveller stepped at length into the
little square, before a most ungainly Cathedral. "Chiefly built in the
XII century," it may have been, but so bedizened by the Renaissance that
its heavy old Provencal walls and massive pillars seem to exist merely
as supports for additions or unreasonable decorations of a poor Italian
style. A certain Monseigneur of the XVII century re-built the choir in a
deep, rectangular form; another prelate enlarged the church proper and
ruined it by constructing a tribune over the aisles, and desiring the
revenues of a new burial-place, he ordered Vauban to accomplish the
daring construction of a crypt. Still another Bishop with like
architectural tastes built a large new chapel which opens from the south
aisle; and with these additions and XVIII century changes in the facade,
the original style of the church was obscured. In spite of the pitiful
remains of dignity which its three aisles, its firm old pillars, and its
height still give to the interior, it is as a whole so mean a building
that it has fittingly lost the title of Cathedral.
[Illustration: THE "PONT D'AVIGNON."]
III.
RIVER-SIDE CATHEDRALS.
[Sidenote: Avignon.]
Everything which surrounds the Cathedral of Avignon, its situation, its
city, its history, is so full of romance and glamour that it is only
after very sober second thought one realises that the church itself is
the least of the papal buildings which majestically overtower the Rhone,
or of those royal ruins which face them as proudly on the opposite bank
of the river. Yet no church in Provence is richer in tradition, and in
history more romantic than tradition.
The foundation of this church goes back to the first Avignon, a small
colony of river-fishermen which gave way before the Romans, who
established a city, Avernio, on the great rocky hill two hundred feet
above the Rhone. Some hundreds of years later the first Christian
missionaries to Gaul landed near the mouth of this river,--Mary the
mother of James, Saint Sara the patron of gypsies, Lazarus, his sister
Martha, and Saint Maximin. Before these storm-tossed Saints lay the fair
and pagan country of Provence, the scene of their future mission; and if
tradition is to be further believed, each went his way, to work mightily
for the sacred cause. Maximin lived in the town that bears his name,
Lazarus became the first Bishop of Marseilles, and Saint Martha ascended
the Rhone as far as Avignon and built near the site of the present
Cathedral an oratory in honour of the Virgin "then living on the earth."
Two early churches, of which this chapel was perhaps a part, were
destroyed in the Saracenic sieges of the VIII century; an inscription in
the porch of the present Cathedral records the very interesting mediaeval
account of its re-building and re-consecration nearly a hundred years
later. It was, so runs the tale, the habit of a devout woman to pray in
the church every night; and after the Cathedral had been finished by the
generous aid of Charlemagne, she happened there at midnight, and
witnessed the descent of Christ in wondrous, shining light. There at the
High Altar, surrounded by ministering angels, he dedicated the Cathedral
to His Mother, Our Lady of Cathedrals; and so it has been called to the
present day. If it is an impossible and ungrateful task to disprove that
the re-construction, or at least the re-founding of this Cathedral was
the work of Charlemagne, so munificent a patron and dutiful a son of the
Church, to prove it is equally impossible. A martyrology of the XI
century speaks of a dedication in 1069, but as this ceremony had been
preceded by another extensive re-building, and was followed by many
other changes, the oldest portions of the present church are to be most
accurately ascribed to the XI, XII, and XIV centuries. The additions of
the centuries following the papal return to Rome have greatly changed
the appearance of the church. A large chapel, built in 1506, gives
almost a northern nave. In 1671, Archbishop Ariosto thought the interior
would be gracefully improved by a Renaissance gallery which should
encircle the entire nave from one end of the choir to the other. To
accomplish this new work, the old main piers below the gallery were cut
away, the wall arches were changed, and columns and piers, almost
entirely new, arose to support a shallow, gracefully balustraded balcony
and its bases of massive carving. Nine years later a new Archbishop
added to the north side a square XVII century chapel, richly ornamental
in itself, but entirely out of harmony with the fundamental style of the
church. Other chapels, less distinguished, which have been added from
time to time, line the nave both north and south, and all are excrescent
to the original plan. Of the exterior, only the facade retains its
primitive character. The side-walls, "entirely featureless," as has been
well said, "reflect only the various periods of the chapels which have
been added to the Cathedral," and the apse was re-built in 1671, in a
heavy, uninteresting form.
[Illustration: "THE INTERIOR HAS A SHALLOW, GRACEFULLY BALUSTRADED
BALCONY."--AVIGNON.]
These additions, superimposed ornamentations, and rebuildings, together
with the very substantial substructure of the primitive Cathedral, form
to-day a small church of unimpressive, conglomerate style, and except
for its history, unnoteworthy. It is therefore a church whose interest
is almost wholly of the past; and the traveller goes back in
imagination, century after century, to the era of Papal residency, when
the Cathedral was not only ecclesiastically important, but
architecturally in its best and purest form. This church, which Clement
V found on his removal to Avignon, and which may still be easily traced,
was of the simple, primitive Provencal style. No dates of that period
are sufficiently accurate to rely upon; but its interest lies not so
much in chronology as in its portrayal of the general type. The interior
is the usual little hall church of the XI century, with its aisle-less
nave of five bays, and plain piers supporting a tunnelled roof, with
double vault arches. Beyond the last bay, over the choir, is the
Cathedral's octagonal dome, and from the rounded windows of its lantern
comes much of the light of the interior, which is sombre and without
other windows of importance.
The facade is architecturally one of the most significant parts of the
church. Above the portal the wall is supported on either side by plain
heavy buttresses, and directly continued by the solid bulk of the tower.
In 1431 this tower replaced the original one which fell in the
earthquake of 1405. It is conjecturally similar, a heavy rectangle which
quite overweighs the church; plain, with its stiff pilasters and two
stories of rounded windows; without grace or proper proportion, but
pleasing by the unblemished severity of its lines. Above the balustrade
with which the tower may be properly said to terminate, the religious
art of the XIX century has erected as its contribution to the Cathedral
a series of steps, an octagon, and a colossal, mal-proportioned statue
of the Virgin. These additions are inharmonious; and the finest part of
the facade is the porch, so classic in detail that it was formerly
supposed to be Roman, a work of the Emperor Constantine. Like the rest
of the church, its general structure is plain and somewhat severe, with
small, richly carved details, in this instance closely Corinthian. The
rounded portal of entrance is an entablature, enclosed as it were by
two supporting columns; and above, in the pointed pediment, is a
circular opening curiously foreshadowing that magnificent development of
the North--the rose-window. Passing through the vestibule, whose
tunnel-vault supports the tower, the minor portal appears, almost a
replica of the outer door, and the whole forms an unusual mode of
entrance, graceful in detail, ponderous in general effect. Far behind
the tower of the facade rises the last significant feature of the
exterior, the little lantern. It is an octagon with Doric and Corinthian
motifs, continuing the essential characteristics of the interior, and
exceedingly typical of Provence.
[Illustration: "THE PORCH SO CLASSIC IN DETAIL."--AVIGNON. _From an old
print._]
Into this church, with its few, unusually classic details, its
Provencal simplicity, its very modest size and plainness, the
munificence of papal pomp was introduced. This was in 1308, an era of
papal storm and stress. Not ten years before, Boniface VIII, with the
tradition of Canossa spurring his haughty ambitions, had launched a bull
against Philip III, whom he knew to be a bad king and whom he was to
find an equally bad, rebellious Christian. "God," said the Prelate, from
Rome, "has constituted us, though unworthy, above kings and kingdoms, to
seize, destroy, disperse, build, and plant in His name and by His
doctrine. Therefore, do not persuade thyself that thou hast no superior,
and that thou art not subject to the head of the ecclesiastical
hierarchy; he who thinks thus is insensate, he who maintains it is
infidel."