TOURNUS BY THE SAONE
Tournus is an attractive old town, lying asleep on a hill beside the
Saône. Through it ran, north and south, the old Roman road of Agrippa.
Its chief monument, the church of the ancient abbey of St. Philibert,
whether viewed from within or from without, is one of the most striking
examples I know, of the barbaric majesty of early Burgundian art. The
grim façade, with its two-storied narthex of three bays--the oldest
Clunisian porch--and its machicolations and towers, recalls the
fortified churches of Provence and Languedoc, built when the southern
land still shook with fear at the thought of the northern "crusaders,"
or the sea-pirates of the south. Nor does the sight of the interior do
other than confirm that impression.
Passing through the lower storey of the gloomy portal, that might well
have served to imprison the bodies of men--just as, symbolically, it
was a shadowy ante-chamber, a purgatory of souls not yet fitted for the
full light of Paradise--we emerged into a church whose rugged strength
had in it something awful and menacing, suggestive of a period even
more barbaric than that eleventh century in which the nave and narthex
were built.
This impression may possibly have a historical as well as an
imaginative basis, owing to the fact that the church has been twice
destroyed--first by the Huns, and later by fire--both disasters
occurring so soon after construction, that the original design may have
been adhered to closely.[130]
Several points of detail catch the eye immediately, especially one
most unusual feature--that the axes of the barrelling are at right
angles to the longitudinal axes of the church. One notices also the
great height of the aisles, and the transfer of capitals from their
usual position on the columns of the nave, to the vaulting shafts. The
aisle columns are engaged in the wall. The apse has a fine ambulatory,
and five square radiating chapels. This part of the church dates from
the latter part of the eleventh century, and contrary to the evidence
of the square chapels, which are somewhat Cistercian, was built under
Clunisian influence. Roman example also is apparent. Over the transept
is a fine central tower of the twelfth century, beneath which is a
dome with Burgundian fluted pilasters. The general barbarity of the
romanesque is lightened in the apse by carved shafts, of great delicacy
and beauty, which have been selected by Viollet-le-Duc for illustrating
the section on colonnettes in his "Dictionnaire Raisonné."
The lower part of the narthex, or rather its extraordinarily massive
pillars, are generally attributed to the tenth century; the towers,
both of which have some good carving, to the eleventh; and the upper
part of the south-west tower to the twelfth. The upper chamber of the
narthex, loopholed in several places, was probably intended for the
defence of the abbey,[131] further security being afforded by the
enceinte and gate, of which the round tower opposite formed part. A
door opened from the upper narthex to the interior of the church, so
that defenders might attend the office.
The crypt, which occupies the whole of the space beneath the choir,
has many pillars, so cunningly disposed that they give to this part of
the church an appearance of much greater size than is really the case.
It contains several relics of the past, notably a wooden vierge of the
twelfth century, the sarcophagus of St. Valérien, and a twelfth century
fresco, the earliest of its kind in the department. The central chapel
in the crypt is the best part of the building, architecturally; though
the beautiful columns and capitals of the eleventh century, including
two Roman ones, do not harmonize well with the primitive roof.
Very little now remains of the ancient monastery; but the
fifteenth-century salle abbatiale is still to be seen in the Place des
Arts, on the south-east side of the church. The buildings on the site
of the cloisters are still known as the carré.
Saint Philibert, after whom the church is named, was not a Burgundian
saint; but the monks who had the keeping of his relics, driven from
their monastery of Noirmoutiers, established themselves at Tournus.
That the cult of this Saint eventually gained great popularity in
Burgundy, is evident from the number of churches--St. Philibert of
Dijon, of Mersault, &c.--dedicated to him throughout the province.
While I was in St. Philibert, my wife was sketching and writing in the
sunny street outside. I have purloined the following from her notebook.
[Illustration: ·STREET IN TOURNUS·]
"When I think of Tournus, there comes to my mind the picture of a dear
little street bathed in warm afternoon sunlight. On my left, as I sit,
pencil in hand, is the west front of the Cathedral, and in front of me,
a row of little, low, whitewashed cottages line the street. Above the
last cottage there rises a heavy gable, thick, and white, and solid,
pierced only by one little grated window. This gable is a fragment of
the old abbey, and the arched grating is the window of the refectory
used by the monks. There are small shops and more cottages on my right.
The street slopes downhill, and ends in a little, round, white tower,
with a round, brown, pointed hat. It is the sort of tower that one
longs to get round the other side of, or, best of all, into. A great,
warm, purple shadow crosses the street in front of me, and creeps a
little way up the white cottages opposite. It leaves a piece of wall in
brilliant, dazzling sun, and then begins again in a jagged, purple lace
fringe, under the heavy frieze of vine-leaves over the doors.
"An old lady, in white cap and woolly shawl, walks out of a cottage,
and into my sketch. The little boys round me, with best striped Sunday
socks, and mouths full of sweets, suddenly become eager and interested,
whereas before they were only curious.
"Hey! La gran'mère!" they whisper excitedly; and a discussion ensues
as to whose grandmother it is. There must be heaps of grandmothers in
Tournus, and I have only shown her back view disappearing round the
little white tower. And, because of the human interest with which my
picture is now endowed, the crowd of little boys becomes quite twice as
large."
* * * * *
Wandering to-day through the quiet, sleepy, but by no means
poverty-stricken streets of Tournus, one can easily forget the
condition of awful misery to which this part of Burgundy was reduced
at the close of the tenth and the beginning of the eleventh centuries,
when the old church of St. Philibert was in course of construction. The
horrors of that period--when the faithful, eagerly awaiting the second
coming of Christ, had, as they thought, ocular demonstration that the
end of all mankind was at hand--have been best depicted for us by that
strange figure, the priest, Raoul Glaber.
This, the most vivid historian of his time, was a wild, unbalanced,
eccentric visionary, whom one of his uncles, himself a monk, had
dedicated to the same vocation, in the hope that monkish discipline
would cure his natural perversities. The hope was not fulfilled, for
Raoul the Bald, always restless and dissatisfied, wandered, in turn,
from monastery to monastery, appearing successively at St. Bénigne
de Dijon, Moutier St. Jean, St. Germain d'Auxerre, Béze, and Cluny,
finding only in St. Guillaume and St. Odilon, at the first and last
named houses, masters of calibre enough to calm his troubled spirit,
and encourage his literary bent.
But, wherever he might be dwelling, Raoul remained an unhappy man, a
victim of a disordered and powerful imagination. He himself tells us
of the frequent visions to which he was subject; visions not without
interest as throwing light upon the mental condition of the time. At
Moutier appeared to him Guillaume de St. Bénigne, who, laying his hand
upon the bald head, said gently; "Do not forget me, I beg of you, if it
be true that I have sincerely loved you; accomplish rather, such is my
desire, the work you have promised to me."[132]
Not all his visions were so consoling. Conscience often brought the
devil to his dreams. He saw one night, standing at the foot of his bed,
"A hideous little monster. He was of middle height, with a thin neck, a
skinny figure, eyes very black, a narrow and wrinkled forehead, a flat
nose, a wide mouth, swollen lips, chin short and tapering, a goat's
beard, straight ears, hair dirty and stiff, dog's teeth, the back of
his head pointed, a protruding belly, a hump on the back, hanging
buttocks and dirty clothing. His whole body appeared to be animated
by a convulsive and desperate activity. He seated himself on the edge
of my bed and proceeded to say to me; 'You will not remain here much
longer,' then ground his teeth and repeated; 'You shall not stay here
any longer.' I jumped out of bed; I ran to prostrate myself at the foot
of the altar of Father Benedict; I recapitulated all the sins I had
committed since my childhood, whether by negligence or perversity."
This strange work of his, which recounts in a chaotic, tortured manner,
without order and without literary grace, though with extraordinary
vividness and effect, the chief social, political, and religious events
of the period dating from 900 to 1046, is the most highly coloured,
yet, at the same time, the most sincere and the most valuable document
we possess concerning the first half of the eleventh century in
Burgundy. The book deals only briefly with the political events of his
time, but is extraordinarily prolix concerning monks and marvels, which
are a source of constant bewilderment to his troubled brain.
For poor Raoul never attained the calm assurance of the established
Christianity of his day, nor came near to realizing the monkish ideals
of Cluny and Citeaux. His book is full of dreadful visions, such as
the one we have already described. He sees the powers of evil lurking
and prowling after men, as lions that lie in wait for their prey. No
Christian charity is found in him, no tenderness, no hope; only the
spirit of revolt, of discontent, of disgust; superstitious fear and
hallucinations chasing one another through his tortured mind, until, at
last, with despairing appeals to the Divine pity, he falls into nervous
crises which paralyse his mental and physical action.
Nor was so terrible a state of mind then unnatural to any timid ones,
whose temperament forbade them to shelter soul, as well as body, within
the safe fold of the church. The events which Raoul himself describes
as happening, within his own experience, here, in this district round
Tournus, are such as might well wreck all but the strongest minds, or
those fortified by an incorruptible faith in the good providence of
God. Look at his picture of the famine of 1031, and you will cease to
wonder that, in those days, men dreamed strange dreams.
"Famine commenced to desolate the universe, and the human race was
threatened with imminent destruction. The temperature (seasons)
became so contrary that no fitting time was found to sow the land,
none favourable to the harvest, chiefly on account of the water with
which the fields were flooded. One would have said that the elements,
enraged, had declared war on one another, when, they were, in fact, but
obeying Divine vengeance in punishing the insolence of men.... This
avenging scourge had first begun in the East; after having ravaged
Greece, it passed to Italy, spread among the Gauls and spared not even
the people of England. All men equally felt its attacks. The great,
those of middle estate and the poor, all had their mouths equally
famished, the same pallor was upon their foreheads; for even the
violence of the great had given way at last to the common dearth. When
they had fed on beasts and birds, that resource once exhausted, hunger
was no less keenly felt, and, to appease it, men must needs resort
to devouring corpses, or even, to escape death, uproot the trees in
the woods, pluck the grass in the streams; but all was useless, for
against the wrath of God there is no refuge save God Himself. Alas!
must we believe it? Fury of hunger renewed those examples of atrocity
so rare in history, and men devoured the flesh of men. The traveller,
assaulted on the road, succumbed to the blows of his aggressors. His
limbs were torn, grilled on the fire, and devoured. Others, flying
their country to escape famine, received hospitality on the road, and
their hosts slew them in the night that they might furnish food. Others
lured children away with the offer of an egg or an apple, and immolated
them to their hunger. In many a place corpses were unearthed to serve
for these sad repasts. One wretch dared even to carry human flesh to
the market of Tournus, to sell it cooked for that of animals. He was
arrested and did not attempt to deny his crime; he was garrotted, then
thrown to the flames. Another, during the night, stole this flesh that
they had buried in the earth; he ate it, and was also burned.
"Three miles from Mâcon, in the forest of Châtigny, is an isolated
church consecrated to St. John. Not far from there, a scoundrel built
a cabin, where he cut the throats of any passers-by, or travellers who
stopped with him. The monster then fed upon their bodies. One day, a
man came there with his wife, to ask for hospitality, and rested a few
moments. But, throwing his glance round all the corners of the cabin he
saw the heads of men, women and children. Immediately he is troubled,
he grows pale, he would leave; but his cruel host endeavours to keep
him there by force. The fear of death doubles the traveller's strength;
at last he escapes with his wife, and runs with all haste to the town.
There he hastens to communicate this frightful discovery to Count Otho
and all the other inhabitants. They send instantly a large number of
men to verify the fact; they press forward, and on their arrival find
the wild beast in his haunt, with forty-eight heads of men whom he
had butchered, and whose flesh he had already devoured. They take him
to the town, hang him up to a beam in a cellar, then throw him to the
flames. We, ourselves, were present at his execution."
"They tried, in the same province, a means which was not, we believe,
adopted elsewhere. Many persons mixed a white earth, like clay, with
any bran or flour they might have, and made loaves therewith to satisfy
their cruel hunger. The faces of all were pale and emaciated, the skin
drawn tight and swollen, the voice shrill and resembling the plaintive
cry of dying birds. The great number of the dead forbade any thought
of their burial, and the wolves, attracted for a long time past by
the odour of corpses, came to tear their prey. As they could not
give separate burial to all the dead, because of their great number,
men full of the Grace of God, dug, in many places, ditches, commonly
called "Charniers," into which they would throw five hundred bodies,
and sometimes more when they would hold more; they lay there mixed
pell mell, half naked, often without any clothing. The cross-ways, the
ditches in the fields, served as burial places.
"The church ornaments were sacrificed to the needs of the poor. They
consecrated to the same purpose the treasures that had long been
destined for this use, as we find it written in the decree of the
Fathers; but, in many places, the treasures of the churches could
not suffice for the necessities of the poor. Often, even, when these
wretches, long consumed by hunger, found means to satisfy it, they
swelled immediately and died; others held in their hands, the food
which they wished to raise to their lips; but this last effort cost
them their life, and they perished without having been able to enjoy
this sad pleasure. There are no words capable of expressing the pain,
the sadness, the sobs, the plaints, the tears of the unhappy witnesses
of these scenes of disaster, especially among the Churchmen, the
bishops, the abbots, the monks and the religieux. It was thought that
the orders of the seasons and the laws of the elements, which, till
then, had governed the world, were fallen back into eternal chaos, and
all feared that the end of the human race had come."
Let those who haste to decry modern institutions remember that to-day
you can buy bread in Tournus for a few sous the kilo.
* * * * *
From the great abbey church that still symbolizes, in its aspect,
something of the horror of those famine-stricken years in which it was
built, we wandered down the main street towards the river, and there
rested at a little café in the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, which is
adorned, as might have been expected, by a statue of Greuze. Here we
were waited on by a kindly, grey-haired, stupid, but intensely curious
old lady, who, wearied by sixty years of monotonous Tournusian life,
was anxious to imbibe from passing travellers, all available gossip,
concerning themselves and the world from which she was cut off. My wife
showed her some sketches. They left her cold.
"Vous faites ça à coup d'œil?" she said, and yawned.
"Madame est artiste," I interjected, carelessly, using a word which
suggests public performer, or actress, rather than artist. The old
woman thawed. Smiling, she turned to my wife.
"In that case madame will be able to earn her evening at the Café de la
Terrasse, beside the river. All the artistes go there, and there is a
piano and singing." We acquiesced, without intending to go. Meanwhile
the old lady studied my wife closely.
"Do you English people dress as we do; and are you married in church?"
She looked from one to another.
"_We_ were," I said, "But everyone isn't." I had answered the last
question first. "And as to clothes, every painter and artistic person,
as is well-known, has her little 'mode à elle.'"
"Justement," said our hostess, "Is this your tour de noces?"
The negative reply grieved her. While I paid for the coffee, Madame
cast an eye upon the retreating figure of my wife;
"Comme Madame est grande," she said, "Et bien belle!"
A few yards away, in the Rue de l'Hôpital, we came to a little inn with
the pretty sign "Au Point de Jour," and the inscription on a board, in
capital letters:
"Avan le jour commence ta journée
De l'Eternel le sainct nom bénissant
Loue le encore et passe ainsy lannée
Ayme Dieu et ton procchain. 1672."
A little girl, who had been sitting before the inn, approached.
Pointing to the inscription, she said scornfully:
"That's not French."
"Pardon, mon enfant," I said, "But it is most certainly French." The
little maid looked rather guilty for a moment. Then she cheered up.
This French that puzzled her must be a local patois.
"Oh, well then," she said. "C'est que je ne suis pas d'ici." (I am not
from this part of the country) and she trotted off up the street.
The landlady and coffee had so fully monopolized our attention that we
had bestowed no more than a passing glance upon the statue of Greuze,
opposite to which we had been sitting. I doubt whether it deserved
more. Surely the most satisfactory monuments to the famous Burgundian
painter are the house in which he was born,[133] the studies from his
brush and pencil, to be seen in the local musée, and the rich meadows
by the Saône. All these complete a setting that enables us better to
sympathize with Greuze's fresh and delicate art.
The painter's life, like that of his fellow-Burgundian, Prudhon, fell
short of happiness. Friction with the authorities of the Academy, and
the merited failure of his classical work, "The Emperor Severus and
Caracalla"--the very title calls up a smile, when we think of it in
connection with the painter of "La Cruche Cassée"--caused him to cease
exhibiting at the Salon, until the Revolution had opened the way for
all painters. Yet the apparent failure was a blessing in disguise;
it taught him his limitations, and brought him back from the stilted
manner of his time, to the call of individual genius, and the freshness
of nature.
He had other troubles; not the least of which was an ill-chosen
wife. Mdlle Babuti, whose charming face he has reproduced on so many
canvasses, was not so easy to live with as her picture, perhaps
idealized by the painter, would lead us to believe; and Greuze himself
lacked that touch of philosophy which would have counterbalanced his
natural sprightliness of character. Finally came the crowning disaster,
the Revolution, that robbed him of nearly all he possessed; so that,
though the Convention gave him lodgings in the vacant chambers at the
Louvre, he died in complete poverty. Shortly before his death, he
remarked to his friend, Barthélemy:
"At my funeral you will be the poor man's dog."
It is said that Napoleon, hearing of the painter's wretched end, said:
"If I had known his situation, I would have given him a Sèvres vase
full of gold, in payment for all his cruches cassées."[134]
We need not, in these pages, discuss Greuze's art; but we may recall
its best feature. Though his manner sometimes lays him open to the
charge of being merely pretty and graceful, to the exclusion of
greater qualities, we must not forget that he was one of the first
who brought men back to nature--at a time when nature was everywhere
forgotten--and reminded them, beautifully, that the simple incidents of
village life, the small joys and sorrows that swell the breast of the
rustic maid over the broken jug, or the welcome home of her lover, are
not less elementally joyful or tragic, not less worthy the attention
and sympathy of the true artist, than scenes of court and throne, and
kindred emotions that, by the caprice of chance, swell the breasts of
kings and decide the destinies of nations.
The idyllic and pastoral effects of Greuze's art, harmonize well with
the unpretentiousness of the town of Tournus, and also with one of its
most delightful features, the meadow-walks that border the Saône.
Here, at sunset, when you have gazed your fill at the mysterious towers
of the abbey, rising above the roofs of the town, you may turn to watch
the opalesque lights in the quivering water, that, doubling in its
mirror the line of distant poplars, slides between reedy banks, between
wide stretches of green pasture, where the pale herds browse. Scarcely
a sound breaks the stillness; only, from time to time, comes the chance
cry of a roystering Sunday youth, from a meadow far away floats the
lowing of distant cattle, from the path the heavy tramp of an aged
peasant, homeward-bound, bending beneath the weight of his spade.
[Illustration: ·TOURNUS·Evening]
From the river, where, all day long, around idle punts, tempting baits
have been dipping and dropping, comes the flop of a lazy fish, making
rings that widen over the glassy surface. Now a distant throb is heard,
that deepens, as a tug, gaudily painted in red and black, with white
bows, comes gliding down the river, drawing four barges laden with
barrels. The second steamer, reversed in the water beneath, is hardly
less vivid to the eye. Swish! Swish! Swish! The water foams from the
flat prow; all the river is decked with dancing, rainbow ripples, azure
blue below, rose pink above, singing, bubbling, racing one another in
music to the shore.
This pastoral, green plain of the Saône, these luscious meadows of
waterish Burgundy, have often recalled to me Phaedra's longing words,
in those last days, when the burden of her life and love was more than
she could bear.
"Oh, for a deep and dewy spring,
With runlets cold to draw and drink!
And a great meadow blossoming,
Long grassed, and poplars in a ring,
To rest me by the brink."[135]
Not less lovely was the same spot next morning, when all the landscape
shone in a light that had in it already something of southern
intensity; when wind and sun were stirring the rushes by the water
side, and jewelling the rippled sweep of the river below the dark
towers of St. Philibert. Two gaily-caparisoned horses, led by a small
boy in a black blouse, came plodding along the towing-path. Two rowers
were easing the horses' labours, with long oars which flashed as they
rose and fell. The banks and meadows were dotted with the same herds of
white philosophers, browsing, and lazily swishing their tails; only,
this morning, heads were bent down to the luscious feast of green,
whereas, towards evening, they are lifted, to ruminate through long
hours of dreamy delight.
* * * * *
Mâcon, to which we paid a flying visit during the interval between two
trains, was once the capital of the Mâconnais, until that country was
incorporated with the Duchy of Burgundy. It is now too wholly modern
a town to retain much character or interest. Almost all the ancient
houses are destroyed, and of the two cathedrals--St. Pierre and St.
Vincent--the former is wholly modern. The west front of the old church,
which was sacked during the Revolution, remains. Our best impression of
Mâcon was the view of the town and river from the train, as it left for
Bourg.
[Illustration: End of chapter XI; By the Saône]
FOOTNOTES:
[130] "L'Art en Bourgogne." Perrault-Dabot p. 55.
[131] Viollet le Duc seems to doubt whether it was originally intended
for defence.
[132] The history of his time, by Raoul Glaber.
[133] August, 1725.
[134] "L'Art en Bourgogne," Perrault-Dabot.
[135] "Hippolytus" of Euripides, Gilbert Murray's translation.
[Illustration: Heading, chapter XII; Antigny-le-Chatel]