Austria, whose petition for the gift of a son, an heir for France, was
granted in the birth of Louis XIV. In gratitude, the Queen enriched the
church by vestments wrought in thread of gold and many sacred ornaments;
and at length she commanded Mansart to replace the little chapel in
which she had prayed, by a larger and more sumptuous one, a somewhat
uninteresting structure in the showy style of the XVII century, which is
now the resting-place of Saint Anne. In this chapel is the most
beautiful of the church's treasures which, strange to say, is a piece of
modern sculpture given by the present "Monseigneur of Avignon." It is
small, and badly placed on a marble altar of discordant toning, with a
draped curtain of red gilt-fringed velvet for its background. Yet in
spite of these inartistic surroundings it has lost none of its tender
charm. Seated, with a scroll on her knees, the aged mother is earnestly
teaching the young Virgin who stands close by her side. The slender old
hand with its raised forefinger emphasises the lesson, and the loving
expression of the wrinkled, ascetic face, the attentiveness of the
Virgin and her slim young figure, make a touching picture, and a
beautiful example of the power of the modern chisel. Yet faith in
shrines and miraculous power is not, in this XX century, as pure nor as
universal as in the days of the past; and Faith, in Provencal Apt which
possesses so large a part of the Saint's body, is not as simple, and
therefore not as strong as in Breton Auray which has but a part of her
finger. Republicanism in the south country is not too friendly to the
Church, kings and queens no longer come with prodigal gifts, and
Sainte-Anne of Apt has not the peasant strength of Sainte-Anne of Auray.
And in spite of the great feast-day of July, in spite of Aptoisian
pride, in spite of the devotion and prayers of faithful worshippers, the
Cathedral of Apt is a church of past rather than of present glories.
[Sidenote: Riez.]
Just as the church-bells were chiming the morning Angelus, and the warm
sun was rising on a day of the early fall, a traveller drove out of old
Manosque. He had no gun,--therefore he had not come for the hunting; he
had no brass-bound, black boxes, and therefore could not be a "Commis."
What he might be, he well knew, was troubling the brain of the
broad-backed man sitting before him, who, with many a long-drawn
"Ou-ou-u-u-" was driving a fat little horse. But native courtesy
conquered natural curiosity and they drove in silence to the long, fine
bridge that spans the river of evil repute:
"Parliament, Mistral, and Durance
Are the three scourges of Provence."
At that time of year, however, the Durance usually looks peaceable and
harmless enough; half its great bed is dry and pebbly, and the water
that rushes under the big arches of the bridge is not great in volume.
But the size and strength of the bridge itself and certain huge rocks,
placed for a long distance on either side of the road, are significant
of floods and of the spring awakening of the monstrous river that, like
Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, has two lives.
[Illustration: "SAINT-MARTIN-DE-BROMES WITH ITS HIGH, SLIM TOWER."]
[Illustration: "THE FORTIFIED MONASTERY OF THE TEMPLARS."--(NEAR
GREOUX).]
The road wound about the low hills of the Alps, past a massive,
fortified monastery of the Templars whose windows gape in ruin; past
Saint-Martin-de-Bromes with its high, slim, crenellated watch-tower;
past many quiet little villages where in the old times, Taine says,
"Good people lived as in an eagle's nest, happy as long as they were not
slain--that was the luxury of the feudal times." Between these villages
lay vast groves of the grey-green olive-trees, large flourishing farms,
and, further still, the bleak mountains of the Lower Alps. It was toward
them the driver was turning, for rising above a smiling little valley,
surrounded by fields of ripened grain, lay Riez. A donjon stands above a
broken wall, on the hillside houses cluster around a church's spire, and
alone, on the top of the hill, stands the little Chapel of Saint-Maxime,
the only relic of the Great Seminary that was destroyed by the
Revolutionists of '89. Here, after the destruction of one of the several
Cathedrals of Riez, the Bishop celebrated Masses, but the little chapel
was never consecrated a Cathedral. It has been recently restored and
re-built in an uninteresting style,--the exterior is bare to ugliness,
the interior so painted that the six old Roman columns which support the
choir are overwhelmed by the banality of their surroundings. The plateau
on which the chapel is built is now almost bare; olive-trees grow to its
edges and there is no trace of the Seminary that was once so full of
active life. The traveller, sitting in the shade of the few pine-trees,
looked over the broad view toward the peaks whose bare rocks rise with
awful sternness, and the little hills that stand between them and the
valley, till finally his eyes wandered to the town beneath, and the
firm, broad roads which approach it from every direction. For Riez,
although in the lost depths of Provence, far from railways and tourists,
is a bee-hive of industry, largely supplying the necessities of these
secluded little towns. Its hat-making, rope factories, and tanneries are
quite important; the shops of its main streets are not without a
tempting attractiveness, and there is all the provincial stateliness of
Saint-Remy with much less stagnancy.
Riez was the Albece Reiorum Apollinarium in the Colonia Julia Reiorum of
the Romans, but there are very few traces of the city with this
high-sounding name. The whole atmosphere of the little town is XII
century. Two of its old gates, part of the wall, and the crenellated
tower still stand, with ruined convents and monasteries of Capuchins,
Cordeliers, and Ursulines; and it may be inferred from the remains of
the Bishop's Palace and the broad promenade which was one of its
avenues, and from the episcopal chateau at Montagnac, that
ecclesiastical state was not less worthily upheld at Riez than in the
other Sees of the South of France.
Many difficulties, however, had beset the Cathedral-building prelates.
Their first church, Notre-Dame-du-Siege, dating partly from the
foundation of the See in the IV century, partly from the X and XII
centuries, was destroyed by storm and flood, and its site near the
treacherous little river being considered too perilous, a new Cathedral
of Notre-Dame-du-Siege and Saint-Maxime was begun; and it was then that
the Bishops celebrated temporarily at Saint-Maxime's on the hill.
During the Revolution the See was suppressed; the church has been much
re-built and changed; so that only a tower which is part of the present
Notre-Dame-du-Siege, and the traces of the earliest foundation near the
little Colostre, remain to tell of the different Cathedrals of Riez.
[Illustration: "THE TOWER OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-SIEGE."--RIEZ.]
Near the site of the oldest church is one of the few monuments of a very
early Christianity which have escaped the perils of time. It is of
unknown date, and although it is said to have been part of the Cathedral
which stood between it and the river, it appears to have been always an
independent and separate building. The peasants say that in the memory
of their forefathers it was used as a chapel, they call it indefinitely
"the Pantheon," "the Temple," or "the Chapel of Saint-Clair," but it was
almost certainly a baptistery of that curious and beautiful type which
was abandoned so early in the evolution of Christian architecture.
[Illustration: "NOTHING COULD BE MORE QUAINTLY OLD AND MODEST THAN THE
BAPTISTERY."--RIEZ.]
Following the road which his innkeeper pointed out, the traveller became
so absorbed in the busy movement of the communal threshing-ground, the
arrival of the yellow grain, the women who were wielding pitchforks, and
the horses moving in circles, with solemn rhythm, that he nearly passed
a low building, the object of his search. Nothing could be more quaintly
old and modest than the baptistery of Riez. It is a small square
building of rough cemented stone whose stucco has worn away. The roof is
tiled, and from out a flattened dome, blades of grass sprout sparsely. A
tiny bell-turret and an arch in the front wall complete the
ornamentation of this humble, diminutive bit of architecture, and except
that it is different from the usual Provencal manner of construction,
one would pass many times without noticing it.
[Illustration: "BETWEEN THE COLUMNS AN ALTAR HAS BEEN
PLACED."--BAPTISTERY, RIEZ.]
Walking down the steps which mark the differences that time has made in
the levels of the ground and entering a small octagonal hall, one of the
most interesting interiors of Provence meets the eye. "Each of its four
sides," writes Jules de Lauriere, "which correspond to the angles of the
outer square, has a semicircular apse built in the walls themselves. The
eight columns, placed in a circle about the centre of the edifice,
divide it into a circular nave and a central rotunda, and support eight
arches which, in turn, support an octagonal drum, and above this is the
dome." This room is of simple and charming architectural conception, and
even in melancholy ruin, it has much beauty. It gains in comparison with
the re-constructed baptisteries of Provence, for something of a
primitive character has been preserved to which such modern altars and
XVII century trappings as those of Aix and Frejus are fatal. Under the
heavy dust there is visible an unhappy coating of whitewash, traces of a
fire still blacken the walls, fragments of Roman sculpture are scattered
about, and between the columns a pagan altar has been placed for
safe-keeping. The columns themselves are of pagan construction, and as
they differ somewhat in size and capitals, it is not improbable that
they came from the ruins of several of the great public buildings of
Riez. At the time of the baptistery's construction, the barbaric
invasion had begun, and these Roman monuments may have been in ruins;
but in any case, it was a pious and justifiable custom of Christians to
take from pagan structures, standing or fallen, stones and pillars that
would serve for building churches to the "one, true God." The pillars
procured for this laudable purpose at Riez, with their beautiful, carved
capitals, gave the little baptistery its one decoration, and far from
disturbing the simplicity of its style, they add a slenderness and
height and harmony to a room which, without them, would be too stiffly
bare. In the rotunda which they form, excavations have brought to light
a baptismal pool, and conduits which brought to it sufficient quantities
of water for the immersion--whole or partial--that was part of the
baptismal service of the early Church. But the archaeological work has
abruptly ceased, and it is to be deeply regretted that here, in this
deserted place, where the Church desires no present restorations in
accordance with particular rites or modern styles of architecture, there
should not be a complete rehabilitation, a baptistery restored to the
actual state of its own era.
[Illustration: "THE BEAUTIFUL GRANITE COLUMNS."--RIEZ.]
Wandering across the fields, with the re-constructive mania strong upon
him, the traveller came across the beautiful granite columns which with
their capitals, bases, and architraves of marble, are the last standing
monument of Riez's Roman greatness. Fragments of sculpture, bits of
stone set in her walls, exist in numbers; but they are too isolated, too
vague, to suggest the lost beauty and grandeur which these lonely
columns express. He gazed at them in wonder. Was he stepping where once
had been a grand and busy Forum, was he looking at the Temple of some
great Roman god? The voices of the threshers sounded cheerily, the
Provencal sun shone bright and warm, but one of the greatest of
mysteries was before him,--the silent mystery of a dead past that had
once been a living present. He sat by the river, and tossed pebbles into
its shallow waters; the slanting rays of the sun gave the columns
delicate tints, old yellows and greys and violets, and at length, as
evening fell, they seemed to grow higher and whiter in the paler light,
until they looked like lonely funereal shafts, recalling to the memory
of forgetful man, Riez's long-dead greatness.
[Sidenote: Senez.]
In the comfortable civilisation of France, the stage-coach usually
begins where the railroad ends; and however remote a destination or
tedious a journey, an ultimate and safe arrival is reasonably certain.
This was the reflection which cheered the traveller when he began to
search for Senez, an ancient city of the Romans which was christianised
in the early centuries and enjoyed the rank of Bishopric until the
Revolution of '89. In spite of this dignified rank and the tenacity of
an ancient foundation, it lies so far from modern ken that even worthies
who live fifty miles away could only say that "Senez is not much of a
place, but it doubtless may be found ten--perhaps fifteen--or even
twenty kilometres behind the railroad."
"If Monsieur alighted at Barreme, probably the mail for Senez would be
left there too. And where letters go, some man or beast must carry
them, and one could always follow."
With these vague directions, the traveller set gaily out for Barreme,
where a greater than he had spent one bleak March night on the anxious
journey from Elba to Paris. The town shows no trace of Napoleon's
hurried visit. It looks a mere sleepy hamlet, and when the traveller
left the train he had already decided to push his journey onward.
"To Senez?" A man stepped up in answer to his inquiry. "Certainly there
was a way to get there, the mail-coach started in an hour. And a hotel?
A very good hotel--not Parisian perhaps, but hot food, a bottle of good
wine, and a clean bed. Could one desire more on this earth?"
The traveller thought not, and left the station--to stand transfixed
before the most melancholy conveyance that ever bore the high-sounding
name of "mail-coach." A little wagon in whose interior six thin persons
might have crowded, old windows shaking in their frames, the remains of
a coat of yellow paint, and in front a seat which a projecting bit of
roof protected from the sun,--this was the mail-coach of Senez, drawn by
a dejected, small brown mule, ragged with age, and a gaunt white horse
who towered above him. To complete the equipage, this melancholy pair
were hitched with ropes.
In due course of time the driver came, hooked an ancient tin box marked
"Lettres" to the dash-board, threw in a sacking-bag, and cap in hand,
invited the traveller to mount with him "where there was air." The long
whip cracked authoritatively, the postilion, a beautiful black dog,
jumped to the roof, and the mail-coach of Senez, with rattle and creak,
started on its scheduled run.
"Houp-la, thou bag of lazy bones done up in a brown skin! Ho-la, thou
whited sepulchre, thinkest thou I will get out and carry thee? Take this
and that."
[Illustration: "THE MAIL-COACH OF SENEZ."]
On either side the whip hit the road ferociously, but the old beasts of
burden shook their philosophic heads and slowly jogged on, knowing well
they would not be touched.
The hot sun of Provence, which "drinks a river as man drinks a glass of
wine," shone on the long, white "route nationale" that stretched out in
well-kept monotony through a valley which might well have been named
"Desolation." On either hand rose mountains that were great masses of
bare, seared rocks, showing the ravages of forgotten glaciers; the soil
that once covered them lay at their feet. Scarcely a shrub pushed out
from the crevices, and even along the road, the few thin poplars found
the poorest of nourishment.
Crossing a small bridge, there came into view an ancient village, a mere
handful of clustered wooden roofs, irregular, broken, and decayed.
"It was a city in the days when we were Romans," said the Courier, "and
they say that there are treasures underneath our soil. But who can tell
when people talk so much? And certainly two sous earned above ground buy
hotter soup than one can gain in many a search for twenty francs below."
He whipped up for a suitable and striking entry into town, turned into a
lane, and with much show of difficulty in reining up, stood before the
"hotel."
The traveller, having descended, entered a room that might have been the
subject of a quaint Dutch canvas. He saw a low ceiling, smoky walls,
long rows of benches, a sanded floor, and pine-board tables that
stretched back to an open door; and through the open door, the pot
swinging above the embers of the kitchen fire. The mistress of the inn,
a strong white-haired woman of seventy, came hurrying in to greet her
guest. "It was late," she said, and quickly put a basin full of water, a
new piece of soap, and a fresh towel on a chair near the kitchen door;
and as the traveller prepared himself for dinner he heard the crackling
of fresh boughs upon the fire and the cheerful singing of the pot.
Little lamps were lighted, and when he came to his table's end, he found
good country wine and a steaming cabbage-soup. Others came in to dine
and smoke and talk, and later from his bed-room window, he saw their
ghostly figures moving up and down the unlighted streets and heard them
say good-night. The inn-door was noisily and safely barred, and when the
retreating footsteps and the voices had died away, the quiet of the dark
remained unbroken until a watchman, with flickering lantern, passed, and
cried aloud "All's well."
[Illustration: "THE OPEN SQUARE."--SENEZ.]
Next morning the sun shone brightly on Senez, and the traveller hurried
to the open square. A horse, carrying a farmer's boy, meandered slowly
by, a chicken picked here and there, and water trickled slowly from the
tiny faucet of the village fountain.
[Illustration: "THE PALACE OF ITS PRELATES."--SENEZ.]
In this quiet spot, near the lonely desolation of the hills, is the
Cathedral. The Palace of its prelates, which is opposite, is now a
farm-house where hay-ricks stand in the front yard, and windows have
been walled up because Provencal winds are cold and glass is dear.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL.--SENEZ.]
Looking at this residence, one would think that the last Bishops of
Senez were insignificant priests, steeped in country wine and country
stagnancy. But such a supposition is very far from true. For we know
that in the XVIII century, Jean Soannen, Bishop of the city, was called
before a Council at Embrun to answer a charge of resistance to the
far-famed Bull "Unigenitus," and so strong were his convictions and so
great his loyalty to his conscience, that he resisted the Council as
well as the Bull, and was deprived of his See as a Jansenist and
recalcitrant, and exiled to the Abbey of La-Chaise-Dieu. In quiet Senez
there must always have been time for reflection, and one can imagine the
bitter struggle of this brave man as he walked the rooms of the Palace,
as he crossed and re-crossed the small square to the Cathedral. One can
imagine his wrestling with God and his conscience every time that he
celebrated a Mass for the people before the Cathedral's altar. One can
understand the bitter fight between two high ideals, irreconcilable in
his life,--that of work in God's vineyard or of doctrinal purity as he
saw it. He had to choose between them, this Bishop of Senez, and when he
left the town to answer the summons of the Council at Embrun, his heart
must have been sore within him, he must have said farewell to many
things. Few decisions can be more serious than the renunciation of
family and home for the service of God, few more solemn than the
struggles between the flesh and the spirit; but no more pathetic picture
can exist than that sad figure of Jean Soannen; for he had renounced
family and the world, and for the sake of "accepted truth" which was
false to him, endured helpless, solitary insignificance under the
espionage of suspicious and unfriendly monks. The traveller remembered
his tomb, that tomb in a small chapel near the foot of the stair-case in
the famous Abbey far-away, and sighing, hoped that in his mournful
exile, the Bishop may have realised that "they also serve who only stand
and wait."
The Bull Unigenitus, which caused his downfall, is believed to have
caused, during the last years of Louis XIV's bigotry, the persecution of
thirty thousand respectable, intelligent, and orderly Frenchmen. De
Noailles, several Bishops, and the Parliament of Paris refused to accept
it, though they stopped short of open rebellion, and even Fenelon
"submitted" rather than acceded to it. This famous and vexatious
document was an unhappy emanation of Pope Clement XIII. Hard pressed by
his faithful supporters, the Jesuits, he promulgated it in 1713, and it
condemns with great explicitness one hundred and one propositions which
are taken from Quesnel's Jansenistic "Reflexions morales sur le Nouveau
Testament." The Jesuits held the Jansenists in a horror which the
Jansenists reciprocated; the Pope owed almost too heavy a debt of
gratitude to the order of Saint Ignatius and was constrained to repay.
But the Bull, instead of procuring peace, brought the greatest
affliction and desolation of mind to His Holiness, and when later, the
French envoy asked him why he had condemned such an odd number of
propositions, the Pope seizing his arm burst into tears.
"Ah Monsieur Amelot! Monsieur Amelot! What would you have me do? I
strove hard to curtail the list, but Pere Le Tellier"--Louis XIV's last
confessor and a devoted Jesuit--"had pledged his word to the King that
the book contained more than one hundred errors, and with his foot on my
neck, he compelled me to prove him right. I condemned only one more!"
The Cathedral of Senez is an humble village church where frank and
simple poverty exists with the remains of ancient splendour. It is
small, as are all churches of its style, and although it does not lack a
homely dignity, it is a modest work of XII century Romanesque, and the
sonorous title of its consecration in 1242, "the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin Mary," suggests an impressiveness which the Cathedral
never had.
Two heavy buttresses that support the facade wall are reminiscent of the
more majestic Notre-Dame-du-Bourg of Digne, and on them rest the ends of
a pointed gable-roof. Between these buttresses, the wall is pierced by a
long and graceful round-arched window, and below the window is the
single, pointed portal whose columns are gone and whose delicate
foliated carvings and mouldings are sadly worn away. A sun-dial painted
on the wall tells the time of day, and at the gable's sharpest point a
saucy little angel with a trumpet in his mouth blows with the wind.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL.--SENEZ.]
Entering the little portal, the traveller saw the poor wooden benches of
the congregation massed together, and beyond them, the stalls of
long-departed Canons. In front of these old stalls, stood the church's
latest luxury, a melodeon, and above them hung the tapestries of its
richer past. Tapestries also beautify the choir-walls, and on either
side, are the narrow transepts and the apses of a good old style. There
are also poor and tawdry altars which stand in strange, pitiable
contrast with the old walls and the fine tunnel vaulting, the dignified
architecture of the past.
[Illustration: "TAPESTRIES BEAUTIFY THE CHOIR WALLS."--SENEZ.]
Leaving the interior, where a solitary peasant knelt in prayer, the
traveller saw side-walls bare as the mountains round about, the squat
tower that rises just above the roof, and coming to the apse-end he
found the presbytery garden. From the garden, beyond the fallen gate, he
saw the church as the Cure saw it, the three round apses with their
little columns, the smaller decorative arches of the cornices, the
pointed roof, and between branches full of apple blossoms, the softened
lines of the low square tower. Here, trespassing, the Cure found him.
And after they had walked about the town, and talked the whole day long
of the great world which lay so far beyond, they went into the little
garden as the sun was going down, and fell to musing over coffee cups.
The priest was first to speak.
"Perhaps, buried under those old church walls, lie proofs of our early
history, the stones of some old Temple, or statues of its gods; for we
were once Sanitium, a Roman city in a country of six Roman roads.
Perhaps all around us were great monuments of pagan wealth, a Mausoleum
near these bare old rocks like that which stands in loneliness near
Saint-Remy, Villas, Baths, or Triumphal Arches."
The keen eyes softened, as he continued in gentle irony, "Down in this
little valley of the Asse de Blieux, our town seems far away from any
scene in which the great ones of earth took part. Although I know that
it is true, it often seems to me a legend that the gay and gallant
Francis I, rushing to a mad war, stopped on his way to injure us; and
that four hundred years ago a band of Huguenots raved around our old
Cathedral, and tried to pull it to the ground."
"And do you think it can be true," the traveller asked, "that Bishops
held mysterious prisoners in that tower for most dreary lengths of
time?"
[Illustration: "BETWEEN BRANCHES FULL OF APPLE-BLOSSOMS, THE CHURCH AS
THE CURE SAW IT."--SENEZ.]