when a Pope received an Emperor who knelt and waited in the snow. Philip
burned the Bull; and to prevent other like fulminations, sent an agent
into Italy. Gathering a band, he found the aged Pontiff at Anagni, his
birthplace, seated on a throne, crowned with the triple crown, the Cross
in one hand and in the other Saint Peter's Keys, the terrible Keys of
Heaven and Hell. They called on him to abdicate, but Boniface thought of
Christ his Lord, and cried out in defiant answer, "Here is my neck, here
is my head. Betrayed like Jesus Christ, if I must die like him, I will
at least die Pope." For reply, Sciarra Colonna, one of his own Roman
Counts, struck him in the face. Buffeted by a noble, and openly defied
by a king, Boniface died "of shame and anger." A month later, this same
king rejoiced, if nothing more, at the death of the Pope's successor;
and in the dark forests of Saint-Jean-d'Angely, Philip bargained and
sold the great Tiara to a Gascon Archbishop who, if Villani speaks
truly, "threw himself at the royal feet, saying, 'It is for thee to
command and for me to obey; such will ever be my disposition!'" As was
not unnatural, the will of the French king was that the Pope should
remain within the zone of royal influence. So Clement lived at Bordeaux
and at Poitiers, and finally retired to the County of Venaissin which
the Holy See possessed by right, and established the pontifical court at
Avignon.
This transfer of the papal residence to Avignon has left many and deep
traces on the history of French Catholicism. The Holy See was no longer
far remote; the French ecclesiastic desirous of promotion had no
dangerous mountains to traverse, no strange city to enter, no foreign
Pontiff to besiege, ignorant or indifferent to his claims. The next
successor of Saint Peter would logically be a Frenchman, and there was
not only a possibility, but a probability for every man of note, that he
might be either the occupant of the Sacred Chair or its favoured
supporter. So Avignon became a city of priests as Rome had been before
her; and as France was the richest country in Europe and the Church
regally wealthy, splendour, luxury, and constant religious spectacles
rejoiced the city, and Bishop, Archbishop, and Abbot, brazenly
neglecting the duties of their Sees, lived here and were seldom "in
residence." Every one had a secret ambition. Of such a situation, the
Popes were not slow to reap the benefits. Difference of wealth, which
brought difference of position, counted much and was keenly felt. Abbots
of smaller monasteries found themselves inferior to Bishops, especially
in freedom from papal interference; while from the inherent wealth and
power of their foundations, the heads of the great monasteries ranked
sometimes with Archbishops, sometimes even with Cardinals. The Pope had
the right to elevate an Abbey or a Priory into a Bishopric, and those
who could offer the "gratification" or the "provocative," might
reasonably hope for the desired elevation which at once increased their
local importance, belittled a neighbouring diocese, and freed them to
some extent from the direct intermeddling of the Pope. The applications
for such an increase of power became numerous, and by 1320 a number of
Benedictine Abbeys had been made Bishoprics. Their creation greatly
decreased the direct and intimate power of the Papacy, but temporarily
increased the papal treasury; and John XXII, who left ten million pieces
of silver and fifteen million in gold with his Florentine bankers, seems
to have thought philosophically, "After us, the deluge."
[Illustration: NOTRE-DAME-DES-DOMS.--AVIGNON]
Another favourite diplomatic and financial device, which was invented by
these famous Popes of Avignon, was the system of the "Commende," which
enabled relatives of nobles and all those whom it was desirable to
placate, not alone ecclesiastics, but mere laymen and bloody barons, to
become "Commendatory Abbots" or "Commendatory Priors," and to receive at
least one-third of the monastery's revenues, without being in any way
responsible for the monastery's welfare. This care was left to a
Prior or a Sub-prior, a sort of clerical administrator who, crippled in
means and in influence, was sometimes unable, sometimes unwilling, to
carry out the duties and beneficences of past ages, and who was always
the victim of a great injustice. The depths of uselessness to which this
infamous practice reduced monastic establishments may be inferred, when
it is remembered that before the XVIII century the famous Abbey of La
Baume had had thirteen Commendatory Abbots, and that the bastards of
Louis XIV were Commendatory Priors in their infancy.
The Popes found the Commende useful, not only as a means of income, but
as a method--at once secure and lucrative--of gaining to their cause the
great feudal lords of France, and making the power of these lords an
added buffer, as it were, between Avignon and the grasping might of the
French Kings. For although the Popes were under "the special protection"
of the Kings, it was as sheep under the special protection of a shearer,
and they found that they must protect themselves against a too "special"
and royal fleecing. For they did not always agree that--
"'Tis as goodly a match as match can be
To marry the Church and the fleur-de-lis
Should either mate a-straying go,
Then each--too late--will own 'twas so.'"
[Illustration: "THE TOWER OF PHILIP THE FAIR."--VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.]
Haunted by the humiliation of their heaven-sent power, caged in
"Babylonish captivity," it is conceivable that the Popes were too
occupied or, perhaps too distracted, to object to the unsuitable
modesty of Notre-Dame-des-Doms. When a Pope swept forth from his
Cathedral, new-crowned, to give "urbis et orbi" his first pontifical
benediction, his eye glanced, it is true, on the crowds prostrate before
him, before the church, awed and breathless; but it fell lingeringly--it
was irresistibly drawn--across the swift Rhone to the town of the kings
who had defied his power, to the royal city of Villeneuve, and to the
strong tower of Philip the Fair, standing proudly in the sunlight. Would
it be thought strange if their thoughts wandered, or if the portraits of
the "French Popes" which hang about the Cathedral walls at Avignon,
show more worldly preoccupation than is becoming to the successors of
Saint Peter and Vicars of Christ?
Little indeed in the days of their residency did the Popes add to
Notre-Dame-des-Doms. A fragile, slender marvel of Gothic architecture,
the tomb of John XXII, was placed in the nave before the altar; and a
monument to Benedict XII was raised in the church. But their Holinesses
incited others in Avignon to good works so successfully that Rabelais
laughingly called it the "Ringing city" of churches, convents, and
monasteries. The bells of Saint-Pierre, Saint-Symphorien, Saint-Agricol,
Sainte-Claire, and Saint-Didier chimed with those of chapels and
religious foundations; the Grey Penitents, Black Penitents, and White
Penitents, priests, and nuns walked the streets, and Avignon grew truly
papal. Clement V and his successors proceeded to the safeguarding of
their temporal welfare in truly noble fashion; and scarcely fifty years
later they had become so well pleased with their new residence that the
magnificent Clement VI refused to leave in spite of the supplications of
Petrarch and Rienzi and a whole deputation of Romans.
During the reign of this Pontiff, the Papal Court became one of the
gayest in Christendom. Clement was frankly, joyously voluptuous; and his
life seems one moving pageant in which luxurious banquets, beautiful
women, and ecclesiastical pomps succeeded each other. The lovely
Countess of Turenne sold his preferments and benefices, the immense
treasure of John XXII was his, and he showered such benefits on a
grateful family that of the five Cardinals who accompanied his corpse
from Avignon, one was his brother, one his cousin, and three his
nephews; and that the Huguenots who violated his tomb at La-Chaise-Dieu,
should have used his skull as a wine-cup, seems an horrible, but not an
unfitting mockery. It was in vain that Petrarch hotly wrote, "the Pope
keeps the Church of Jesus Christ in shameful exile." The desire for
return to Rome had passed.
Avignon was not an original nor a plenary possession of the Holy
Fathers, but "the fairest inheritance of the Berengers," and it was from
that family that half of the city had to be wrested--or obtained. Now
the lords of Provence were Kings of Naples and Sicily, and therefore
vassals of the Holy See. For when the Normans took these Southern states
from the Greeks and thereby incurred the jealousy of all Italy, they had
warily placed themselves under the protection of the Pope and agreed to
hold their new possessions as a papal investiture. It happened at this
time that the vassal of the Pope in Naples and in Sicily was the
beauteous "Reino Joanno," the heiress of Provence. What she was no
writer could describe in better words than these, "with extreme beauty,
with youth that does not fade, red hair that holds the sunlight in its
tangles, a sweet voice, poetic gifts, regal peremptoriness, a Gallic
wit, genuine magnanimity, and rhapsodical piety, with strange indecorum
and bluntness of feeling under the extremes of splendour and misery,
just such a lovely, perverse, bewildering woman was she, great
granddaughter of Raymond-Berenger, fourth Count of Provence,--the pupil
of Boccaccio, the friend of Petrarch, the enemy of Saint Catherine of
Siena, the most dangerous and most dazzling woman of the XIV century. So
typically Provencal was this Queen's nature, that had she lived some
centuries later, she might have been Mirabeau's sister. The same
'terrible gift of familiarity,' the same talent of finding favour and
swaying popular assemblages, the same sensuousness, bold courage, and
great generosity were found in this early orphaned, thrice widowed
heiress of Provence. To this day, the memory of the Reino Joanno lives
in her native land, associated with numbers of towers and fortresses,
the style of whose architecture attests their origin under her reign. It
says much for her personal fascinations that far from being either
cursed or blamed she is still remembered and praised. The ruins of
Gremaud, Tour Drainmont, of Guillaumes, and a castle near Roccaspervera,
all bear her name: at Draguignan and Flagose, they tell you her canal
has supplied the town with water for generations: in the Esterels, the
peasants who got free grants of land, still invoke their benefactress.
At Saint-Vallier, she is blessed because she protected the hamlet near
the Siagne from the oppression of the Chapters of Grasse and Lerins. At
Aix and Avignon her fame is undying because she dispelled some
robber-bands; at Marseilles she is popular because she modified and
settled the jurisdiction of Viscounts and Bishops. Go up to Grasse and
in the big square where the trees throw a flickering shadow over the
street-traders, you will see built in a vaulted passage a flight of
stone steps, steps which every barefoot child will tell you belong to
the palace of 'La Reino Joanno.' Walls have been altered, gates have
disappeared, but down those time-worn steps once paced the liege lady of
Provence, the incomparable 'fair mischief' whose guilt ... must ever
remain one of the enigmas of history." This "enigma" has strange
analogies to one which has puzzled and impassioned the writers of many
generations, the mystery of that other "fair mischief" of a later
century, Mary Queen of Scots. Like Mary, Jeanne was accused of the
murder of her young husband, and being pressed by the vengeance of his
brother--no less a person than the King of Hungary,--she decided to
retreat to her native Provence and appeal to the Pope, her gallant and
not over-scrupulous suzerain. "Jeanne landed at Ponchettes," continues
the writer who has so happily described her, "and the consuls came to
assure her of their devotion. 'I come,' replied the heiress, whose wit
always suggested a happy phrase, 'to ask for your hearts and nothing but
your hearts.' As she did not allude to her debts, the populace threw up
their caps; the Prince de Monaco, just cured of his wound at Crecy,
placed his sword at her service; and the Baron de Benil, red-handed from
a cruel murder, besought her patronage which, perhaps from a
fellow-feeling, she promised with great alacrity. At Grasse she won all
hearts and made many more promises, and finally, arriving at Avignon,
she found Clement covetous of the city and well-disposed to her. Yet
morality obliged him to ask an explanation of her recent change of
husbands, and before three Cardinals, whom he appointed to be her
judges, the Queen pleaded her own cause. Not a blush tinged her cheek,
no tremor altered her melodious voice as she stood before the red-robed
Princes of the Church and narrated, in fluent Latin, the story of the
assassination of Andrew, the death of her child, and her marriage with
the murderer, Louis of Tarento, who stood by her side. The wily Pope
noted behind her the proud Provencal nobles, the Villeneuves and
d'Agoults, the de Baux and the Lescaris, who brought the fealty of the
hill-country, and who did not know that, having already sold her jewels
to the Jews, their fair Queen was covenanting with the Pope for Avignon.
The formal trial ended, the Pontiff solemnly declared the Queen to be
guiltless,--and she granted him the city for eighty thousand pieces of
gold."
[Illustration: "THE GREAT PALACE."--AVIGNON.]
Clement enjoyed ownership in the same agreeable manner as his
predecessors, "without the untying of purse-strings." Perhaps he used
the purse's contents for the more pressing claim of the great Palace of
which he built so large a part; perhaps he handed it, still filled, to
Innocent VI who built the famous fortifications of Avignon and protected
himself against the marauding "White Companies," perhaps it was still
untouched when Bertrand du Guesclin and his Grand Company stood before
the gate and demanded "benediction, absolution, and two hundred thousand
pounds." "What!" the Pope is said to have cried, "must we give
absolution, which here in Avignon is paid for, and then give money
too--it is contrary to reason!" Du Guesclin replied to the bearer of
these words, "Here are many who care little for absolution, and much for
money,"--and Urban yielded.
Gregory XI, the last of the "French Popes," returned to Rome, and at his
death the "Great Schism" followed;--Clement VII, in Avignon, was
recognised by France, Spain, Scotland, Sicily, and Cyprus; Urban VI, in
Rome, by Italy, Austria, and England. The County Venaissin was ravaged
by wars and the pests that come in their train. At length the
Avignonnais, who had not enjoyed greater peace under their anointed
rulers than under worldling Counts, rose against Pierre de Luna, the
"Anti-pope" Benedict XIII, who fled. From that time no Pontiff entered
the gates, and the city was administered by papal legates. In later
days, in spite of the sacred character of its rulers and his own
undoubted orthodoxy, Louis XIV seized Avignon several times; and Louis
XV, in unfilial vengeance for the excommunication of the Duke of Parma,
took possession of the city. But it was not until after the beginning
of the French Revolution, in 1791, that the Avignonnais themselves
arose, chased the Vice-Legate of the Pope from the city, and appealed
for union with France; and it was at this period that the Chapel of
Sainte-Marthe, the Cloister, and the Chapter House were swept away. Thus
ended the temporal power of the Papacy in France, planned for worldly
profit and carried out with many sordid compromises;--a residency
unnoted for great deeds or noble intentions and whose close marked the
"Great Schism."
To-day papal Avignon is become French Avignon, a pleasant city where the
Provencal sun is hot and where the Mistral whistles merrily. Above the
banks of the Rhone the simple Cathedral stands, with its priests still
garbed in papal red, its Host still carried under the white papal
panoply. Here also is the great Palace of the Popes, "which is indeed,"
says Froissart, "the strongest and most magnificent house in the world."
And yet its grim walls suggest neither peace nor rest; and to him who
recalls, this great, impressive pile tells neither of glories nor of
triumphs. Bands of unbelieving Pastoureaux marched toward it; soldiers
of the "White Companies" and soldiers of du Guesclin gazed mockingly at
it; it was the prison of Rienzi, and the home of the harassed Popes who
had ever before them, just across the river, the menacing tower of that
"fair king" who had led them into "Babylonish captivity."
[Sidenote: Vaison.]
On the banks of a pleasant little river among the Provencal hills is
Vaison, one of the ancient Gallic towns which became entirely romanised;
and many illustrious families of the Empire had summer villas there as
at Arles and Orange. Barbarians of one epoch or another have devastated
Vaison of all her antique treasures, except the remains of an
Amphitheatre on the Puymin Hill. Germanic tribes who swooped down in
early centuries destroyed her villas and her greater buildings; and
vandals of a later day have scattered her sculptures and her tablets
here and there. Some are in the galleries of Avignon; a Belus, the only
one found in France, was sent to the Museum of Saint-Germain; and in the
multitude of treasures in the British Museum, the most beautiful of all
her statues, a Diadumenus, is artistically lost. In the days when it
still adorned the city, during the reign of the Emperor Gallienus,
Vaison was christianised by Saint Ruf, her Bishopric was founded, and in
337 the first General Council of the Church held in Gaul assembled here.
Another Council in the V century, and still another in the VI, are proof
of her continued importance.
[Illustration: "ON THE BANKS OF A PLEASANT LITTLE RIVER IS VAISON."]
[Illustration: "THE RUINED CASTLE OF THE COUNTS OF TOULOUSE."--VAISON.]
Among the first of Gallo-Roman cities, she was also among the first to
suffer. Chrocus and his horde who sacked Orange, seized her Bishop and
murdered him; and Alains, Vandals, and Burgundians, following in their
wake, brought disaster after disaster to the cities lying near the
Rhone. Vaison, by miracle, did not lose her prestige. In the X and XI
centuries she built her fine Cathedral with its Cloisters, and in 1179
she was still great enough to excite the covetousness of Raymond VI,
Count of Toulouse. This magnificent and ambitious prince built a castle
on a height above the city, and as he had before terrorised my Lord
Bishop of Carpentras, so now he seized the anointed person of Berenger
de Reilhane, who was not only Vaison's Bishop, but her temporal prince
as well. Berenger was a sufficiently powerful personage to make an
outcry which re-echoed throughout Christendom; the Pope and the Emperor
came to his aid; and in the Abbey Church of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard,
Raymond VI did solemn penance, and, before receiving absolution, was
publicly struck by the Papal Legate with a bundle of birch rods. Above
the Bishop's Palace the great castle still loomed in menace, but on that
day Berenger de Reilhane triumphed and Vaison was at peace.
It was a peace which presaged her quiet, uneventful downfall. For other
interests were growing stronger in the country, other cities grew where
she stood still, and in the XIV century, when Avignon became the seat of
papal power, Vaison had passed from the world's history. Her Bishopric
endured till 1801, but her doings are worthy only of provincial
chronicles and to-day she is but a little country town, served by the
stage-coach. She still lies on both banks of the river; the "high city,"
with long rows of deserted houses, climbs the side of the steep hill and
is dominated by the ruins of the great castle, which Richelieu
destroyed. The "lower city," which is the busier of the two, lies on the
opposite bank; and on its outskirts, in a little garden-close, almost
surrounded by the fields, is the Cathedral,--solitary, lonely, and old.
[Illustration: "THE WHOLE APSE-END."--VAISON.]
[Illustration: "THE SOUTH WALL WHICH IS CLEARLY SEEN FROM THE
ROAD."--VAISON.]
The decoration of the exterior is slight, a dentiled cornice and a
graceful foliated frieze extend along the top of the side-walls, which
although most plainly built, are far from being severely angular or
gaunt and have a quaint and pleasing harmony of line. The west front is
so featureless that it scarcely deserves the title of facade. The south
wall, which is clearly seen from the road, has a small portal and plain
buttresses that slope at the top. The central apse is rectangular and
heavy, the little southern apse is short and round, and that of the
north is tall and thin as a pepper-box. Behind them rise the pointed
roof of the nave and the heavy tower. The whole apse-end is constructed
in most picturesque irregularity, and the new red of the roof-tiles and
sombre grey of the old stone add greatly to its charm.
Unlike many churches of its period Notre-Dame of Vaison is three-aisled.
Slender, narrow naves, whose tunnel vaults are not extremely lofty, end
in small circular apses. The nave is a short one of three irregular
bays, and over the last, which precedes the choir, is the little
eight-sided dome, which instead of projecting above the roof is
curiously placed a little lower than the tunnel vaulting of the other
bays. The High Altar, which originally belonged to an older church, is
well placed in the simple choir; for it belongs in style, if not in
actual fact, to the first centuries of the Faith; and in the
semi-darkness behind the altar, the old episcopal throne still stands
against the apse's wall, in memory of the custom of the Church's early
days. The low arches of the aisles, the dim lighting of the church, its
simple ornaments of classic bands and little capitals, its slight
irregularities of form and carvings, make an interior of fine and strong
antique simplicity.
A little door in the north wall leads to the Cloisters, which are
happily in a state of complete restoration, and not as a modern writer
has described them, "practically a ruin." The wall which overlooks them
has an inscription that adjures the Canons to "bear with patience the
north aspect of their cells." The short walks have tunnel vaults with
cross-vaults in the corners and in parts of the north aisle. Great piers
and small, firm columns support the outer arches; and on the exterior of
the Cloister the little arches of the columns are enclosed in a large
round arch. Many of the capitals are uncarved, some of the piers have
applied columns, but many are ornamented in straight cut lines. On one
side, two bays open to the ground, forming an entrance-way into the
pretty close, where the bushy tops of a few tall trees cast flickering
shadows on the surrounding walls and the little grassy square.
[Illustration: "TWO BAYS OPEN TO THE GROUND."--VAISON.]
[Illustration: "THE GREAT PIERS AND SMALL FIRM COLUMNS."--VAISON.]
The Cloister is small and simple in its rather heavy grace. Noise and
unrest seem far from it, and underneath its solid rounded vault is peace
and shelter from the world. And in its firm solidity of architecture
there is the spirit of a perfect quiet, a tranquil charm which must
insensibly have calmed many a restless spirit that chafed beneath the
churchly frock, and fled within its walls for refuge and for helpful
meditation.
Few Provencal Cathedrals have the interest of Vaison and its Cloister.
Lying in the forgotten valley of the Ouveze, in an old-fashioned town,
all its surroundings speak of the past and its atmosphere is quite
unspoiled. The church itself has been spared degenerating restorations;
and although it has no sumptuousness as at Marseilles, no grandeur as at
Arles, no stirring history as the churches that lay near the sea,
although it is one of the smallest and most venerable of them all, no
Cathedral of the Southland has so great an architectural dignity and
merit with so ancient and so quaint a charm.
[Sidenote: Arles.]
In the midst of the wealth of antique ruins, near the Theatre, the
Coliseum, and the Forum of this "little Rome of the Gauls," stands a
noble monument of the ruder ages of Christianity, the Cathedral,
Saint-Trophime. Here Saint Augustine, apostle to England, was
consecrated; here three General Councils of the Church were held, here
the Donatists were doomed to everlasting fire, and here the Emperor
Constantine, from his summer palace on the Rhone, must have come to
"assist" at Mass. The building in which these solemn scenes of the early
Church were enacted soon disappeared and was replaced by the present one
whose older walls Revoil attributes to the IX century. The present
Cathedral's first documentary date is 1152, in the era of the Republic
of Arles. The name of Saint-Etienne was changed, and the body of
Saint-Trophime, carried in state from the ruined Church of the
Aliscamps, was buried under a new altar and he was solemnly proclaimed
the Patron of the richest and most majestic church in all Provence.
[Illustration: "IN THE MIDST OF THE WEALTH OF ANTIQUE RUINS."--ARLES.]
[Illustration: THE FACADE OF SAINT-TROPHIME.--ARLES.]