peasants tell,--an old tradition of the land. It may be true, since
priests are mortal men and doubtless dealt with sinners." He smiled
indulgently. "Through the many years I have been here, I have often
wondered about all these things, but it is seldom I can speak my
thoughts. Sometimes when I am here alone, I lose the sense of present
things and seem to see the phantoms of the past. Then the dusk comes on,
as it is coming now; the night blots Senez from my sight as fate has
blotted out its record from history,--and I realise that our human
memory is in vain."
[Sidenote: Aix.]
The old Cathedral of Saint-Sauveur at Aix is not one of those rarely
beautiful churches where a complete and restful homogeneity delights the
eye, nor is it a church of crude and shocking transitions. It is rather
a well-arranged museum of ecclesiastical architecture, where, in
sufficient historical continuity and harmony, many Provencal conceptions
are found, and the evolution of Provencal architecture may be very
completely followed. As in all collections, the beauty of Saint-Sauveur
is not in a general view or in any glance into a long perspective, but
in a close and loving study of the details it encloses; and so charming,
so really beautiful are many of the diverse little treasures of Aix,
that such study is better repaid here than in any other Provencal
Cathedral. For this is one of the largest Cathedrals of the province,
and the buildings which form the ecclesiastical group are most
complete. With its baptistery, Cloister, church, and arch-episcopal
Palace, it is not only of many epochs and styles, but of many historical
uncertainties, and the hypotheses of its construction are enough to daze
the most hardened archaeologist.
[Illustration: "THE SOUTH AISLE."--AIX.]
The oldest part of the Cathedral is the baptistery, and the date of its
origin is unknown. Much of its character was lost in a restoration of
the XVII century, but its old round form, the magnificent Roman columns
of granite and green marble said to have been part of the Temple to
Apollo, give it an atmosphere of dignity and an ancient charm that even
the XVII century--so potent in architectural evil--was unable to
destroy.
[Illustration: THE ROMANESQUE PORTAL.]
In 1060, after the destructive vicissitudes of the early centuries,
Archbishop Rostaing d'Hyeres issued a pastoral letter appealing to
the Faithful to aid him in the re-building of a new Cathedral; and it
may be reasonably supposed that the nave which is at present the south
aisle, the baptistery, and the Cloisters were the buildings that were
dedicated less than fifty years later. They are the only portions of the
church which can be ascribed to so early a period, and with the low door
of entrance, the single nave and the adjoining cloister-walk, they
constitute the usual plan of XI century Romanesque. Considering this as
the early church, in almost original form, it will be seen that the
portal is a very interesting example of the Provencal use not only of
Roman suggestion, but of the actual fragments of Roman art which had
escaped the invader; that the south aisle, in itself a completed
interior, bears a close resemblance to Avignon; and that the Cloister,
although now very worn and even defaced, must have been one of the
quaintest and most delicate, as it is one of the tiniest, in Provence.
Three sides of its arcades support plain buildings of a later date; the
fourth stands free, as if in ruin. Little coupled columns, some
slenderly circular, some twisted, and some polygonal, rest on a low
wall; piers, very finely and differently carved, are at each of the
arcade angles; the little capitals of the columns were once beautifully
cut, and even the surfaces of the arches have small foliated disks and
rosettes and are finished in roll and hollow. Unfortunately, a very
large part of this detail-work is so defaced that its subjects are
barely suggested, some are so eaten away that they are as desolate of
beauty as the barren little quadrangle; and the whole Cloister seems to
have reached the brink of that pathetic old age which Shakespeare has
described, and that another step in the march of time would leave it
"sans everything."
[Illustration: THE CLOISTER.--AIX.]
About two hundred years later, in 1285, the Archbishop of Aix found the
Cathedral too unpretending for the rank and dignity of the See, and he
began the Gothic additions. Like many another prelate his ambitions were
larger than his means; and the history of Saint-Sauveur from the XIII to
the XIX century, is that oft-told tale of new indulgences offered for
new contributions, halts and delays in construction, emptied treasuries,
and again, appeals and fresh efforts. The beginnings of the enlarged
Cathedral were architecturally abrupt. The old nave, becoming the south
aisle, was connected with the new by two small openings; it retained
much of its separateness and in spite of added chapels much actual
isolation. The Gothic nave, the north aisle and its many chapels, the
apse, and the transepts, whose building and re-construction stretched
over the long period between the XIII and XVII centuries, are
comparatively regular, uniform, and uninteresting. The most ambitious
view is that of the central nave, whose whole length is so little broken
by entrances to the side aisles, that it seems almost solidly enclosed
by its massive walls. Here in Gothic bays, are found those rounded,
longitudinal arches which belong to the Romanesque and to some structure
whose identity is buried in the mysterious past. The choir, with its
long, narrow windows, and clusters of columnettes, is very pleasing, and
its seven sides, foreign to Provence, remind one of Italian and Spanish
constructive forms and take one's memory on strange jaunts, to the
far-away Frari in Venice and the colder Abbey of London. From the choir
of Saint-Sauveur two chapels open; and one of them is a charming bit of
architecture, a replica in miniature of the mother-apse itself. The
paintings of this mother-apse are neutral, its glass has no claim to
sumptuousness, and the stalls are very unpretending; but above them hang
tapestries ascribed to Matsys, splendid hangings of the Flemish school
that were once in old Saint Paul's.
With these beautiful details the rich treasure-trove of the interior is
exhausted, and one passes out to study the details of the exterior. The
Cathedral's single tower, which rises behind the facade line, was one of
the parts that was longest neglected,--perhaps because a tower is less
essential to the ritual than any other portion of an ecclesiastical
building. Begun in 1323, the work dragged along with many periods of
absolute idleness, until 1880, when a balustrade with pinnacles at each
angle was added to the upper octagonal stage, and the building of the
tower was thus ended. The octagon with its narrow windows rests on a
plain, square base that is massively buttressed. It is a pleasant,
rather than a remarkable tower, and one's eye wanders to the more
beautiful facade. Here, encased by severely plain supports, is one of
the most charming portals of Provencal Gothic. Decorated buttresses
stand on either side of a large, shallow recess which has a high and
pointed arch, and in the centre, a slim pier divides the entrance-way
into two parts, pre-figuring the final division of the Just and the
Unjust. A multitude of finely sculptured statues were formerly hidden in
niches, under graceful canopies, and in the hundred little nooks and
corners which lurk about true Gothic portals. Standing Apostles and
seated Patriarchs, baby cherubs peering out, and the more dramatic
composition of the tympanum--the Transfiguration,--all lent a dignity
and wealth to Saint-Sauveur. Unfortunately many of these sculptures were
torn from their crannies in the great Revolution; and it is only a few
of the heavenly hosts,--the gracious Madonna, Saint Michael, and the
Prophets,--that remain as types of those that were so wantonly
destroyed. The low, empty gables that sheltered lost statues, their
slender, tapering turrets, and the delicate outer curve of the arch, are
of admirable, if not imposing, composition. The portal's wooden doors,
protected by plain casings, abound in carvings partly Renaissance,
partly Gothic. The Sibyls and Prophets stand under canopies, surrounded
by foliage, fruits, and flowers, or isolated from each other by little
buttresses or pilasters. This Gothic portal quite outshines, in its
graceful elaboration, the smaller door which stands near it, in the
simpler and not less potent charm of the Romanesque. And side by side,
these portals offer a curiously interesting comparison of the essential
differences and qualities of their two great styles. If the Romanesque
of Saint-Sauveur is far surpassed at Arles and Digne and Sisteron,
nowhere in Provence has Gothic richer details; and if the noblest of
Provencal creations must be sought in other little cities, the lover of
architectural comparisons, of details, of the many lesser things rather
than of the harmony of a single whole, will linger long in Aix.
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL.--AIX.]
The old city itself shows scarcely a trace of the many historic dramas
of which it has been the scene,--the lowering tragedy of the Vaudois
time,--the bright, gay comedy of good king Rene's Court,--the shorter
scenes of Charles V's occupation,--the Parliament's struggle with
Richelieu and Mazarin,--the day of the fiery Mirabeau,--the grim
melodrama of the Revolution,--all have passed, and time has destroyed
their monuments almost as completely as the Saracens destroyed those of
the earlier Roman days. Only a few, unformed fragments of the great
Temple of Apollo remain in the walls of Saint-Sauveur. The earliest
Cathedral, Sainte-Marie-de-la-Seds, has entirely disappeared, the old
thermal springs are enclosed by modern buildings, and only the statue of
"the good King Rene" and the Church of the Knights of Malta give to Aix
a faint atmosphere of its past distinction. Who would dream that here
were the homes of the elegant and lettered courtiers of King Rene's
brilliant capital, who would think that this town was the earliest Roman
settlement in Gaul, the Aquae Sextiae of Baths, Temples, Theatres, and
great wealth? Aix is a stately town, a provincial capital which Balzac
might well have described--with old, quiet streets that are a little
dreary, with a fine avenue shaded by great trees in whose shadows a few
fountains trickle, with lines of little stages that come each day from
the country,--a city whose life is as far in spirit from the near-by
modernity of Marseilles as it is from that of Paris, as quaintly and
delightfully provincial as that other little Provencal city, the
Tarascon of King Rene and of Tartarin.
Languedoc.
I.
CATHEDRALS OF THE CITIES.
[Sidenote: Nimes.]
Entering Languedoc from the valley of the Rhone, the Cathedral-lover is
doomed to disappointment in the city of Nimes. All that intense,
intra-mural life of the Middle Ages seems to have passed this city by,
and its traces, which he is so eager to find, prove to be neither
notable nor beautiful.
[Illustration: "AN AMPHITHEATRE WHICH RIVALS THE ART OF THE
COLISEUM."--NIMES.]
The great past of Nimes is of a more remote antiquity than the Cathedral
Building Ages. A small but exquisite Temple, a Nymphaeum, Baths, parts of
a fine Portal, Roman walls, and an Amphitheatre which rivals the art of
the Coliseum,--these are the ruins of Nimean greatness. She was
essentially a city of the Romans, and that, even to-day, she has not
lost the memory of her glorious antiquity was well illustrated in 1874,
when the Nimois, with much pomp and civic pride, unveiled a statue to
"their fellow-countryman," the Emperor Antoninus Pius. These are the
memories in which Nimes delights. Yet her history of later times, if not
glorious, is full of strange and curious interest. Like all the ancient
cities of the South, she fell into the hands of many a wild and alien
foe, and at length in 737, Charles Martel arrived at her gates. Grossly
ignorant of art, no thing of beauty that stood in his path escaped fire
and axe; and smoke-marks along the arena walls show to-day how narrowly
they escaped the irreparable destruction which had wiped out the Forum,
the Capitol, the Temple, the Baths, and all the magnificence of Roman
Narbonne. To both the early and the later Middle Ages, Roman remains had
scarcely more meaning than they had for the Franks. The delicate Temple
of Trajan's wife, scorned for its pagan associations, was used as a
stable, a store-house, and, purified by proper ceremonials, it even
became a Christian church. The Amphitheatre has had a still stranger
destiny. To a mediaeval Viscount, it was naturally inconceivable as a
place of amusement, and as naturally, he saw in its walls a stronghold
where he could live as securely as ever lord in castle. As a fortress
which successfully defied Charles Martel, it was a place of no mean
strength, and in 1100 it had become "a veritable hornets' nest, buzzing
with warriors."
A few years before, Pope Urban II had landed at Maguelonne and ridden to
Clermont to preach the First Crusade. On his return he stopped at Nimes
and held a Council for the same holy purpose. Raymond de Saint-Gilles,
Count of Toulouse and overlord of Nimes, travelled there to meet the
Sovereign Pontiff, and amid the wonderful ferment of enthusiasm which
the "Holy War" had aroused, the South was pledged anew to this romantic
and war-like phase of the cause of Christ. Trencavel, Viscount of Nimes,
loyal to God and his Suzerain, followed Raymond to Palestine. Its
natural protectors gone, the city formed a defensive association called
the "Chevaliers of the Arena." As its name implies, this curious
fraternity was composed of the soldiers of the ancient amphitheatre.
Like many others of the time it was semi-military, semi-religious, its
members bound by many solemn oaths and ceremonies, and thus, by the
eccentricity of fate, this old pagan playground became a fortress
consecrated to Christian defence, the scene of many a solemn Mass.
The divisions in the Christian faith, which followed so closely the
fervours of the Crusades, were most disastrous to Nimes. From the XIII
until the XVII centuries, wars of religion were interrupted by
suspicious and unheeded truces, and these in turn were broken by fresh
outbursts of embittered contest. An ally of the new "Crusaders" in Simon
de Montfort's day, Nimes became largely Protestant in the XVI century;
and in 1567, as if to avenge the injuries their ancestors had formerly
inflicted on the Albigenses, the Nimois sacked their Bishop's Palace and
threw all the Catholics they could find down the wells of the town. This
celebration of Saint Michael's Day was repaid at the Massacre of Saint
Bartholomew. The wise Edict of Nantes brought a truce to these
hostilities,--its revocation, new persecutions and flights. A hundred
years later the Huguenots were again in force, and, aided by the unrest
of the Revolution, successfully massacred the Catholics of the city; and
during the "White Terror" of 1815 the Catholics arose and avenged
themselves with equal vigour. When it is remembered that this savage and
vindictive spirit has characterised the Nimois of the last six hundred
years, it is scarcely surprising that they should prefer to dwell on the
remote antiquity of their city rather than on the unedifying episodes of
her Christian history.
Between the glories of her paganism and the disputes of Christians, the
Faith has struggled and survived; but in the Cathedral-building era,
religious enthusiasm was so often expended in mutual fury and reprisals
that neither time nor thought was left for that common and gentle
expression of mediaeval fervour, ecclesiastical architecture. And the
Church of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor, which would seem to have suffered
from the neglect and ignorance of both patrons and builders, is one of
the least interesting Cathedrals in Languedoc.
A graceful gallery of the nave, which also surrounds the choir, is the
notable part of the interior, and the insignificance of the exterior is
relieved only by a frieze of the XI and XII centuries. On this frieze is
sculptured, in much interesting detail, the Biblical stories of the
early years of mankind; but it is unfortunately placed so high on the
front wall that it seems badly proportioned to the facade, and as a
carved detail it is almost indistinguishable. As has been finely said
the whole church is "gaunt" and unbeautiful; it is a depressing mixture
of styles, Roman, Romano-Byzantine, and Gothic; and in studying its one
fine detail, a photograph or a drawing is much more satisfactory than an
hour's tantalising effort to see the original.
[Sidenote: Montpellier.]
Montpellier is "an agreeable city, clean, well-built, intersected by
open squares with wide-spread horizons, and fine, broad boulevards, a
city whose distinctive characteristics would appear to be wealth, and a
taste for art, leisure, and study." The "taste" and the "art" are
principally those of the pseudo-classic style, an imitation of "ancient
Greece and imperial Rome," which the French of the XVIII century carried
to such unpleasant excess. The general characteristics of the imitation,
size and bombast, are well epitomised in the principal statue of
Montpellier's fine Champ de Mars, which represents the high-heeled and
luxurious Louis XIV in the unfitting armour of a Roman Imperator,
mounted on a huge and restive charger. Such affectation in architectural
subjects is the death-blow to all real beauty and originality, and
Montpellier has gained little from its Bourbon patrons except a series
of fine broad vistas. No city could offer greater contrast to the
ancient and dignified classicism of Nimes.
If the mediaeval origin of Montpellier were not well known, one would
believe it the creation of the Renaissance, and the few narrow, tortuous
streets of the older days recall little of its intense past, when the
city grew as never before nor since, when scholars of the genius of
Petrarch and the wit of Rabelais sought her out, when she belonged to
Aragon or Navarre and not to the King of France. This is the interesting
Montpellier.
In the XIII century, she had a University which the Pope formally
sanctioned, and a school of medicine founded by Arabian physicians which
rivalled that of Paris. More significant still to Languedoc, her
prosperity had begun to overshadow that of the neighbouring Bishopric of
Maguelonne, and a bitter rivalry sprang up between the two cities. From
the first Maguelonne was doomed. She had no schools that could rival
those of Montpellier; she ceased to grow as the younger city increased
in fame and size, till even history passed her by, and the stirring
events of the times took place in the streets of her larger and more
prosperous neighbour. Finally she was deserted by her Bishops, and no
longer upheld by their episcopal dignity, her fall was so overwhelming
that to-day her mediaeval walls have crumbled to the last stone and only
a lonely old Cathedral remains to mark her greatness. In 1536 my Lord
Bishop, with much appropriate pomp and ceremony, rode out of her gates
and entered those of Montpellier as titular Bishop for the first time.
He did not find the townsmen so elated by the new dignity of the city as
to have broken ground for a new Cathedral, nor did he himself seem
ambitious, as his predecessors of Maguelonne had been, to build a church
worthy of his rank. However, as a Bishop must have a Cathedral-church,
the chapel of the Benedictine monastery was chosen for this honour and
solemnly consecrated the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre of Montpellier. This
chapel had been built in the XIV century, and at the time of these
episcopal changes, only the nave was finished. It was, however, Gothic;
and as this style had become much favoured by the South at this late
period, the Bishop must have believed that he had the beginning of a
very fine and admirable Cathedral. In the religious wars which followed
1536, succeeding prelates found much to distract them from any further
building; the Cathedral itself was so injured that such attention as
could be spared from heretics to mere architectural details was devoted
to necessary restorations and reconstructions, and the finished
Saint-Pierre of to-day is an edifice of surprising modernity.
In the interior, the nave and aisles are partially of old construction,
but the beautiful choir is the XIX century building of Revoil. Of the
exterior, the entire apse is his also, and as the portal of the south
wall was built in 1884 and the northern side of the Cathedral is
incorporated in that of the Bishop's Palace, only the tower and the
facade are mediaeval.
[Illustration: "ITS GENERAL EFFECT IS SOMEWHAT THAT OF A
PORTE-COCHERE."--MONTPELLIER.]
None of the towers have much architectural significance, either of
beauty or originality. In comparison with the decoration of the facade
they make but little impression. This decoration has more original
incongruity than any detail ever applied to facade, Gothic or
Romanesque, and is an extreme example of the license which southern
builders allowed themselves in their adaptation of the northern style.
It is a vagary, and has appealed to some Anglo-Saxon travellers, but
French authorities, almost without dissent, allude to it apologetically
as "unpardonable." Its general effect is somewhat that of a
porte-cochere, whose roofing, directly attached to the front wall, is
gothically pointed, and supported by two immense pillars. The pillars
end in cones that resemble nothing in the world so much as sugar-loaves,
and the whole structure is marvellously unique. Yet strange to say, the
effect of the facade, with the smoothness and roundness of its pillars
and the uncompromising squareness of its towers, while altogether bad,
is not altogether unpleasing. Standing before it the traveller was both
bewildered and fascinated as he saw that even in the extravagance of
their combinations, the builders, with true southern finesse, had
avoided both the grotesque and the monstrous.
[Illustration: "THE FINEST VIEW IS THAT OF THE APSE."--MONTPELLIER.]
As a whole, Saint-Pierre is a fine Cathedral; through many stages of
building, enlarging, and re-constructing, its style has remained
consonant; but the general impression is not altogether harmonious. The
perspective of the western front, which should be imposing, is destroyed
by a hill which slopes sharply up before the very portal. The facade is
attached to the immense, unbroken wall of the old episcopal Palace, and
the majesty, which is a Cathedral's by very virtue of its height alone,
is entirely destroyed by a seemingly interminable breadth of wall.
Reversing the natural order of things, the finest view is that of the
apse. And this modern part is, in reality, the chief architectural glory
of this comparatively new Cathedral and its comparatively modern town.
[Sidenote: Beziers.]
"You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned
Cathedral-city and you will see in a moment the mediaeval relations
between Church and State. The Cathedral is the city. The first object
you catch sight of as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky,
or the huge towers holding possession of the centre of the
landscape--majestically beautiful--imposing by mere size. As you go
nearer, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when
down below among the streets and lanes twilight is darkening. And even
now, when the towns are thrice their ancient size, ... the Cathedral is
still the governing force in the picture, the one object which possesses
the imagination, and refuses to be eclipsed." These words are the
description of Beziers as it is best and most impressively seen. From
the distance, the Cathedral and its ramparts rise in imposing mass, a
fine example of the strength, pride, and supremacy of the Church.