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CATHEDRAL CITIES OF FRANCE
[Illustration: LÂON, VIEW FROM THE PLAIN]
CATHEDRAL CITIES
OF FRANCE
BY
HERBERT MARSHALL, R.W.S.
AND
HESTER MARSHALL
WITH SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
BY HERBERT MARSHALL, R.W.S.
[Illustration]
TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK CO., Limited
1907
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
_Published September, 1907_
NOTE
The following chapters are the result of notes put together during
summers spent in France in the course of the last five years. They are
not intended to mark out any particular geographical scheme, though
considered as isolated suggestions they may possibly prove useful to the
intending traveller; nor do they aim at covering all the Cathedral
cities of France.
The authors are indebted for much valuable help from the following
books: Viollet-le-Duc’s “Dictionnaire de l’Architecture”; Mr. Phené
Spiers’s “Architecture East and West”; Mr. Francis Bond’s “Gothic
Architecture in England”; Mr. Henry James’s “Little Tour in France”; Mr.
Cecil Headlam’s “Story of Chartres”; Freeman’s “History of the Norman
Conquest” and “Sketches of French Travel”; Dr. Whewell’s “Notes on a
Tour in Picardy and Normandy”; M. Guilhermy’s “Itineraire archéologique
de Paris”; M. Hoffbauer’s “Paris à travers les ages”; M. Enlart’s
“Architecture Réligieuse”; Mr. Walter Lonergan’s “Historic Churches of
Paris”; the “Chronicles” of Froissart and Monstrelet; and to the letters
in _The Times_ of its war correspondent, 1870 and 1871.
H. M. M. and H. M.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A FRENCH CATHEDRAL CITY 1
II BOULOGNE TO AMIENS 15
III LÂON, RHEIMS, AND SOISSONS 38
IV ROUEN 62
V EVREUX AND LISIEUX 88
VI BAYEUX 104
VII ST. LÔ AND COUTANCES 128
VIII LE MANS 151
IX ANGERS 169
X TOURS AND BLOIS 181
XI CHARTRES 201
XII ORLÉANS, BOURGES, AND NEVERS 218
XIII MOULINS, LIMOGES, AND PÉRIGUEUX 245
XIV ANGOULÊME AND POITIERS 267
XV LA ROCHELLE AND BORDEAUX 281
XVI SENS, AUXERRE, AND TROYES 299
XVII MEAUX, SENLIS, AND BEAUVAIS 324
XVIII PARIS AND SOME OF ITS CHURCHES 348
INDEX 385
ILLUSTRATIONS
Lâon: view from the plain _Frontispiece_
St. Martin, Lâon _Facing Page_ 2
The Quayside, Amiens " " 6
A Street in Perigueux " " 10
The Porte Gayole, Boulogne " " 16
Abbeville " " 24
The Place Vogel, Amiens " " 28
Evening on the Somme at Amiens " " 32
The Ramparts, Lâon " " 42
Lâon from the Boulevards " " 48
Rheims " " 54
Soissons " " 58
Rouen from the River " " 68
Rue de l’Horloge, Rouen " " 78
Rue St. Romain, Rouen " " 84
Evreux " " 90
The Towers of Evreux " " 96
St. Jacques, Lisieux " " 100
A Street Corner, Bayeux " " 110
Bayeux from the Meadows " " 122
St. Lô " " 130
The Cathedral Front, St. Lô " " 134
Coutances " " 140
The South Porch of the Cathedral, Coutances " " 146
St. Pierre, Coutances " " 152
Le Mans " " 158
Nôtre Dame de la Coûture, Le Mans " " 164
Angers " " 176
Tour de l’Horloge, Tours " " 184
St. Gatieu, Tours " " 188
Blois " " 194
Chartres from the North " " 202
Chartres " " 208
Rue de la Porte Guillaume, Chartres " " 212
Orléans " " 220
The House of Jacques Cœur, Bourges " " 224
Bourges " " 228
The Musée Cujas, Bourges " " 232
The Hôtel-de-Ville, Nevers " " 236
The Port du Croux, Nevers " " 240
Moulins " " 248
Limoges " " 254
Perigueux from the River " " 258
St. Front, Périgueux " " 262
Angoulême " " 270
Poitiers " " 274
Entrance to the Harbour, La Rochelle " " 282
The Harbour of La Rochelle " " 286
Bordeaux " " 294
Sens " " 302
St. Germain, Auxerre " " 306
The Bridge and Cathedral, Auxerre " " 310
A Street in Troyes " " 316
Meaux " " 326
The Old Mills at Meaux " " 330
Senlis " " 338
The Pont Marie, Paris " " 350
Nôtre Dame, Paris " " 366
St. Germain des Prés, Paris " " 372
Pont St. Michel and Ste. Chapelle, Paris " " 378
Chapter One
A FRENCH CATHEDRAL CITY
There are in France to-day three distinct classes of cities--one might
even add, of cathedral cities--and as the bishopric is a dignity far
more usual in France than in England, “cathedral” may serve for the
present as a term inclusive of many towns.
Firstly, there is the town whose local importance has remained unchanged
through a succession of centuries and an eventful history, which has
added a modern importance to that bequeathed to it by Time. Such towns
are Le Mans, Angers, Amiens and Rouen. Secondly, we find the towns whose
glory has departed, but who still preserve the outward semblance of that
glory, though they remind us in passing through them of a body without a
spirit, of an empty house, whose inhabitants are long dead and have left
behind them only the echoes of their past footsteps. These towns are a
picturesque group, and if we go back upon the centuries, we shall find
in them the centre of much that has made history for our modern eyes to
read. Look at Chartres and Bayeux, and Lâon and Troyes, for embodiments
of this type. And lastly, there are the cities which exactly reverse the
foregoing state of affairs, and owe their growth to the kindly fostering
of a later age--an age which has learnt wisdom more quickly than its
predecessors, and has learnt, moreover, to love the whirr of engines and
the busy paths of commerce more than the safe keeping of ancient
monuments and the reading of history in the worn greyness of their
stones. Among these we may count Havre; but of this class it is more
difficult to find examples in France, although in England the north
country is thick with such mushroom cities.
[Illustration: ST. MARTIN, LÂON]
The history of the growth of one Gaulish town may easily serve for that
of another: later days decided its continued importance or its gradual
decay, as the case might be; and, as Freeman points out in his essay
upon French and English towns, “the map of Roman Gaul survives, with but
few and those simple changes in the ecclesiastical map of France down to
the great Revolution.” Thus the history of these cities affected
themselves alone and not, to any great extent, the lands in which they
stood. It is a salient testimony to the lasting influence of ancient
Gaul that in most town-names some trace can be found of the old name,
either of the tribe which inhabited it, or of the territory belonging to
that tribe; and even under the Roman rule the Gallic forms did not
entirely disappear. Later, when the Franks came from the East, one would
suppose that they had names of their own for the conquered cities; but
if this were the case, these names have not come down to us--all of
which goes to show that the Frankish dominion, though it lasted on, and
gave to the land her ablest dynasty of kings, had no real rooted
influence in the country, and that France, as relating to ancient Gaul,
is a formal and almost an empty title.
The Gallic cities owed their origin in the earliest times, naturally, to
their situation. The roving tribes, looking for a settlement, would
choose a camping ground either on a rocky hill, where they could safely
entrench themselves against a possible enemy, or on an island in the
midst of a river or marsh, where the surrounding fens would be an
efficient safeguard; and it speaks well for their choice, that when the
Romans came, skilled in the knowledge of war, offensive and defensive,
they did not destroy the settlements of the conquered tribes, but
rebuilt and fortified them according to the inimitable pattern of Rome,
not effacing but improving what was already to hand. Instead of the rude
Gallic huts, stately palaces rose up, with their marble baths;
aqueducts threw a succession of arches to the nearest water source,
theatres sloped up the hill-side, bridges crossed the river, and where
the grottoes of the Druidic or other primitive faiths had been, rose the
columns and friezes of splendid temples to Jupiter and Diana and Apollo.
Certainly it was a change for the better; and the appearance of many of
these towns under the Cæsars was probably much more imposing, though
perhaps less picturesque, than that which they presented in mediæval
days. In the later Roman era a new element introduces itself. From the
early Christian Church at Rome come missionary saints; not saints in
those days, but often the poorest and meanest of the brethren, charged
with a message to Gaul--Hilary, Martin, Dionysius, and the others.
Fierce conflicts follow, persecutions, burnings, martyrdoms--Dionysius
bears witness at Lutetia, Savinian and Potentian at Sens--and at last
the first church arises within the city, poor and meagre very often in
comparison with the huge pagan temples which it replaces, but loved and
venerated by the faithful few, and, best of all, the origin of the grand
cathedrals which are now the glory of France. “The votaries of the new
creed found a home within the walls of their seats of worship such as
the votaries of the elder creed had never found within theirs. And
around the church arose the dwellings of the bishop and his clergy, a
class of men destined to play no small part in the history of the land.”
In the Christian city, then, we can begin to trace the beginnings of the
mediæval city. Other foundations sprang up in time within the walls--a
baptistery was built, as at Aix and Poitiers, to meet the needs of the
flocks of converts; other churches perpetuated the memory of some saint;
among the river meadows some royal or saintly founder saw a fitting spot
for a convent, and the abbey church arose, with its cloisters,
dormitories and refectories, and all the other fair buildings in which
the early brothers took such a loving pride. Then the bishop himself,
with his dignity growing as the Christian faith advanced, must be housed
as befitted a deputy of the Holy See; and forthwith sprang up those
lordly _évêchés_ which even now serve to remind us of their ancient
beauty, though in some cases the civil arm has taken them over, and
converted them into hôtels de ville. Then came the barbarian inroads,
first of Vandals, Huns, Franks and the rest, next of Normans. These
attacked, but could not destroy, or even permanently harm, the position
of the city; and when the invaders had either gone their way or settled
down in the land, new elements of strength and importance were added to
the township: castles and strongholds were built up for the great men
who had taken possession of the chief cities, and the great civil or
feudal power of the dukes and counts began to exercise its jurisdiction
side by side with the old-established influence of the Church. Then, as
was notably the case at Le Mans and Troyes, the growing commercial
importance of a town would force a communal charter from the seigneur; a
burgher quarter would rise, quite as important as the quarter of the
nobles and the clergy, and thus the city would become trebly
strengthened, except, indeed, when, as was sometimes the case, one power
resented the fancied encroachments of the other and made war upon its
neighbours.
[Illustration: THE QUAYSIDE, AMIENS]
This power within itself was undoubtedly all to the advantage of the
city; but it was fatal to the unity of the kingdom, since it cut France
up into a mass of separate states, any one of which could, on the
occasion of a quarrel with the sovereign--and these quarrels were rather
the rule than the exception--fortify itself by means of its count, its
castle and its city walls, and defy the royal forces at its pleasure.
While cathedral cities in England were drawing closer and closer to the
king as their head, and thereby sinking their own strength in the unity
of the Crown, those in France were striving at a power apart from the
Crown, or, rather, striving to maintain a power which the Crown had
never yet been able to incorporate with itself. Thus a city of France
has a much more varied, a much more individual history than has the
sister city in England; a story less bound up as part of the great whole
of the history of the French kingdom, more concentrated within its own
walls, and therefore more tangible, if it be desired to study it
irrespective of that whole history. This, then, is the story of its
growth from almost pre-historic days. Whether, as an individual city, it
flourished after the Middle Ages had fortified and strengthened it, or
whether it fell into a state of quiet, picturesque and peaceful decay,
depended of course upon particular circumstances, but enough remains to
make of the general history of the French city a fascinating though
almost inexhaustible study, only surpassed by the study of each town in
its separate case.
[Illustration: A STREET IN PÉRIGUEUX]
Wars and revolutions have done their best to destroy what Time had
kindly tried to preserve for our delight; nevertheless, a cathedral town
in France of to-day is a very pleasant place, and offers exceptional
opportunity for the study of French life in almost every aspect. Our
business here, however, is with the cathedrals and the historical side
of the town, rather than with the lighter points of view; and such
things as every traveller will encounter in the course of his journeys,
the crowd outside the _cafés_, the weekly markets, the festivals, civil
and ecclesiastical, the quaint ways and speech of the peasant folk and
the _contretemps_ of hotel life have not only been described before,
times without number, but are such as will be fairly obvious to the
average observer, and, if he has never travelled before, will come all
the more as a pleasant surprise if he is left to find them out for
himself. If, as is more likely to be the case in this enlightened age,
he is an experienced traveller, he will know them all by heart, and
perhaps be inclined to cavil at having them set before him once again in
a light which could not pretend to any novelty.
Chapter Two
BOULOGNE TO AMIENS
Boulogne is perhaps too near the starting point to arrest the
outward-bound traveller; he ranks it with Calais, Dieppe, and Havre, as
a place to be passed through as quickly as possible; and the splendid
train service to Paris naturally makes him hesitate to break his journey
at Boulogne. The general tendency in England is to despise the French
railway service, and some guide-books even now tell us that the average
speed of a French express is from thirty-five to forty-five miles an
hour, also that the trains invariably pass each other on the left-hand
side. As a matter of fact, all the main lines follow the same rule of
the road which obtains in England, and as to average speed, the run from
Calais to Paris equals, if it does not exceed, that of any long-distance
train-service in our own country, covering the distance of 185 miles at
the rate of fifty-six miles an hour.
As a seaport and fishing centre, Boulogne is one of the most interesting
and important towns in France; and its fishing-boats sail out in great
numbers to the North Sea for the cod fishery along the north coast of
Scotland. When the herring fishing begins, Boulogne adds its contingent
to the fleets of Cornwall, to the luggers of the West Coast, and to the
cobbles of Whitby; and on the eve of the departure to the
fishing-ground, the fisherman’s quarter, known as La Beurière, is alive
with the orgies of its sailor population. Dancing takes place on the
quays, and short entertainments are held in an improvised theatre, while
the rich brown-ochre sails of the splendid luggers and smacks are
stretched from deck to deck, forming an awning under which the owners
and captains meet together with their friends to wish success to the
undertaking of those who “go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their
business in great waters.”
Boulogne has the reputation of being the most Anglicised of French
towns, and was in years gone by often associated with the seamy side of
society. Many a stranger found here a convenient refuge, and Mr.
Deuceace and other of Thackeray’s heroes enjoyed the sea breezes of
Boulogne after the mental strain of somewhat questionable financial
manœuvres.
[Illustration: THE PORTE GAYOLE, BOULOGNE]
The city walls, restored in the sixteenth or seventeenth century,
date back to 1231, and were built on the foundations of the ancient town
of Bononia, generally identified with the Roman Gesoriacum, though not
on very reliable authority. From its position on the high grassy cliffs
of Picardy, guarding the little river Liane and looking out over the
waves to the white line of the English shore, Boulogne in other days had
an importance quite distinct from that which we now assign to it. The
Viking sailing down the English Channel saw it as one of the outposts of
a new and fair land open to the conquest of fire and sword, and in his
primitive fashion of asserting the mastery, destroyed the city on the
cliff. Later on, these ravages were made good under the rule of Rolf,
the “Ganger,” by this time master of Neustria; the city was restored and
became the head of a countship, which dignity it retained until late in
the fifteenth century, when Louis XI. cast envious eyes upon it, and by
a stroke of craft approaching near to genius, united it to the crown of
France, declaring the Blessed Virgin to be patroness of the town and
himself her humble vassal, holding it under her suzerainty, which no man
in France dared to deny. Henry VIII. laid siege to Boulogne in 1544 and
gained it for England; but the day of English prestige in France had
gone by, and her right of possession was of very short duration, for in
the next reign Boulogne was given back to France, and Calais alone
remained to England of the spoils of the Hundred Years’ War.
Above the present town rises the monument known as the “Colonne de la
Grande Armée,” a memorial of the first Napoleon’s encampment at Boulogne
in 1804, and of his magnificent preparations for the invasion of
England. In the Château, which dates from the thirteenth century and is
now used as barracks, Napoleon III. was confined after his abortive
descent upon the town in 1840. It was the second of these desperate
attempts to dethrone the “constitutional king” Louis Philippe and
reinstate the Imperial dynasty. The expedition to Strasburg four years
before had at least been attended by this much success, that the young
aspirant was enthusiastically welcomed by the military portion of the
population; but the descent upon Boulogne, planned at the time when the
body of the first Emperor was being brought from St. Helena to Paris,
was a failure from first to last. The little band of conspirators, about
fifty in number, with their tame eagle--a symbol of the Imperial
power--landed at the port, but found no adherents, and within a few
hours of their landing were under arrest. Napoleon himself underwent
trial before the Chamber of Peers, and after a short imprisonment, as
we have seen, in the Château, was sent to the castle of Ham-sur-Somme.
Three out of the four original gates of the ancient city still remain,
notably the Porte Gayole, the rooms in whose flanking towers were at one
time used as prisons. In the room above the gateway were formerly held
the meetings of the _Guyale_, a _réunion_ of ancient associations of
merchants--what would now be called a chamber of commerce--and from this
the gate-house was called Porte Gayole.
Of the cathedral at Boulogne it is difficult to speak with any
enthusiasm. It stands as a memorial of the Renaissance work of that
period which we should call early Victorian; but like so many modern
churches, it possesses an ancient crypt, part of which belongs to the
twelfth century, showing that the foundations at least are those of a
Gothic church, which was probably destroyed during the Revolution.
On the journey to Amiens the train passes through Abbeville on the
Somme, a place some sixty years ago sacred to geologists, who, led by
the distinguished Boucher de Perthes, Prestwick and Evans, extracted
from the river bed and neighbouring peat and undisturbed gravels, not
only remains of beaver, bear, &c., but also innumerable hand-fashioned
flints and stone hatchets, and made the valley of the Somme up to Amiens
and St. Acheul classic ground to the antiquary and an object of
pilgrimage to the student of pre-historic man.
In the early days of the Frank kings this quiet little town upon the
Somme had acquired enough importance for fortification, and its city
walls were built by Hugh Capet. Later on, after Peter the Hermit had
lifted up his voice in Europe, and every man who called himself a true
warrior turned his face eastward to Palestine, Abbeville was destined to
play her part in the affairs of the great world outside her walls, and
to share in the fortunes of that company of men whose watchword was
“Jerusalem.” In the first two Crusades, when the crusading spirit was as
yet ardent and pure and had not degenerated into a desire for plunder
and rapine, the leaders met within the gates of Abbeville before setting
out to the Holy Land.
One can well imagine the stir their presence made within the quiet
precincts of the little town, the excitement of the townfolk, the eager
crowding of the youth of the place around the standards of these great
chiefs, Godfrey de Bouillon, destined to become king of Jerusalem; dark,
passionate Robert of Normandy, son of the Conqueror; Hugh of
Vermandois, brother to the King of France; Stephen of Blois; Raymond of
Toulouse; Robert of Flanders, he who was called the “Sword and Lance of
the Christians”; and, lastly, Tancred the chivalrous, the very
embodiment of the spirit of the crusaders--and a “very perfect, gentle
knight.”
For nearly two hundred years the English ruled Abbeville. When, in 1272,
Eleanor of Castile was married to Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I.,
the town was included in the estates which she brought to England as her
dowry; and being near the sea coast, and consequently within easy reach
of England, its new lords were able to retain their hold upon the city
even after the disastrous close of the Hundred Years’ War had given
almost every English conquest back to France. Towards the end of the
fifteenth century it fell into the hands of the Burgundian party, but
the French crown finally reclaimed it in 1477. Since that time it has
twice seen an international alliance concluded within its gates. In
1514, Anne of Brittany, the wife of Louis XII.--“Pater Patria”--died
without having an heir in the direct line, and her husband, unwilling
that the crown should go to François d’Angoulême, determined to take
another wife, and made advances to Henry VIII. for the hand of his
beautiful sister, Mary Tudor; and after the negotiations were completed,
they were married at Abbeville. As far as Louis’s purpose went, however,
the marriage was a failure, as the King died a few months later, and the
Duc d’Angoulême, his son-in-law, ascended his throne as François Ier.
To his reign belongs the second alliance in the history of Abbeville,
the pact signed between the King of France and Cardinal Wolsey, on
behalf of Henry VIII., against the common enemy, Charles V.--a figure so
commanding, so infinitely greater than his contemporaries, that beside
him the brilliancy of François, the gallantry of Henry, and the pomp and
magnificence of his favourite Wolsey, seemed entirely eclipsed, and the
three men appear almost as puppets, unstable and vacillating, now the
closest of friends, and now the bitterest of enemies.
Abbeville still maintains many of the old picturesque landmarks which
made it a favourite sketching ground for Prout and for Ruskin. The
market-place is surrounded by a number of houses with high pitched
gables, coloured in various tints of white, grey and pale green. Some
beautiful drawings by Ruskin, executed in pencil and tint, which have
lately been exhibited to the public, bear testimony to its
picturesqueness, of which a great deal still remains in the side
streets and along the river front.
[Illustration: ABBEVILLE]
The church of St. Wolfran is late Flamboyant, and is looked upon by
Ruskin as “a wonderful proof of the fearlessness of a living
architecture,” for, say what one will of it, that Flamboyant of France,
however morbid, was as vivid and intense in its imagination as ever any
phase of mortal mind. The nave consists of bays having a high clerestory
and a triforium screened by rich sixteenth century carving. The ribs of
the vaulting fall sheer down without imposts or break of any kind. The
low chancel and eastern termination of the church are unworthy of the
splendid carving of the western façade.
The approach to Amiens offers no _coup d’œil_ of clustering towers or
spires such as an English or Norman cathedral city usually gives us, and
the Cathedral itself is hidden as we pass into the heart of the town
along the Rue des Trois Cailloux, a street which is said to follow the
alignment of the old city walls. Ruskin advises the traveller, however
short his time may be, to devote it, not to the contemplation of arches
and piers and coloured glass, but to the woodwork of the chancel, which
he considers the most beautiful carpenter’s work of the Flamboyant
period. Note should be taken of two windows in the Chapel of the
Cardinal de la Grange, built about 1375. These are very interesting as
foreshadowing in their detail that style of architecture--the
Flamboyant--which obtained in France in the fifteenth century and was
contemporaneous with the English Perpendicular.
The two western towers look little more than heavily built buttresses,
and as towers are not very appropriate in design, being not square, but
oblong in plan. They rise little above the ridge line of the nave, whose
crossing with the transepts is marked by a beautiful _flèche_, which
Ruskin, however, describes as “merely the caprice of a village
carpenter.” As he further declares, the Cathedral of Amiens is “in
dignity inferior to Chartres, in sublimity to Beauvais, in decorative
splendour to Rheims, and in loveliness of figure sculpture to Bourges,”
yet it fully deserves the name given to it by Viollet-le-Duc--“The
Parthenon of Gothic architecture.”
[Illustration: THE PLACE VOGEL, AMIENS]
The height of the nave and aisles is, according to Mr. Francis Bond in
his book “Gothic Architecture in England,” respectively nearly three
times their span, and the vastness of the fenestration is very striking,
particularly in the clerestory, through whose lower mouldings the
triforium is negotiated, thus dividing each bay into two storeys,
clerestory and pier arch, instead of into three, clerestory triforium
and pier arch. This gives the effect after which the French architect
strove: one vast blaze of light and colour through the upper windows,
coming not only from the clerestory, but from the glazed triforium also;
the magnificent deep blue glass typifying the splendour of the heavens.
On the other hand, in a sunny clime, builders cared less for light, and
preferred the effect of a blind triforium which throws the choir below
into gloomy and mysterious shadow. Thus we see that upon the design of
the triforium depends to a very great extent the effect of the light and
shade of the interior of a great church.
Once, being personally conducted by the dean over one of the cathedrals
of the west of England, the writer was suddenly called upon to give the
derivation of “triforium.” The word is applied to the ambulatory or
passage, screened by an arcade, which runs between the pier arches and
clerestory windows, and is considered to refer to the three openings, or
spaces, _trinæ fores_, into which the arcading was sometimes divided. It
probably has nothing to do with openings in multiples of three, nor with
a Latinised form of “thoroughfare,” as suggested in Parker’s Glossary,
although the main idea is that of a passage running round the inside of
a church, either as at Westminster, in the form of an ambulatory
chamber, or of a gallery pierced through the main walls, from whence the
structure can be inspected without the trouble of using ladders or
erecting scaffolding. M. Enlart in his “Manuel d’Archéologie Française,”
derives the word from a French adjective “trifore,” or “trifoire,”
through the Latin “transforatus,” a passage pierced through the
thickness of the wall; and this idea of a passage-way is certainly
suggested by an old writer, Gervase, who, in his description of the new
Cathedral of Canterbury, rebuilt after the fire, alludes to the
increased number of passages round the church under the word “triforia.”
“Ibi triforium unum, hic duo in choro, et in alâ ecclesiæ tercium.”
On the north side of the Cathedral flows the Somme, and there is perhaps
no better means of realising the great height and mass of the building
than by walking along the river banks, whence we see the old houses,
great and small, rise tier above tier under the quiet grey outline of
this “giant in repose.”
[Illustration: EVENING ON THE SOMME AT AMIENS]
In an extract from his private diary Ruskin gives the following
description of this walk along the river, showing it in an aspect at
once squalid and picturesque: “Amiens, May 11th.--I had a happy walk
here this afternoon, down among the branching currents of the Somme: it
divides into five or six, shallow, green, and not over-wholesome;
some quite narrow and foul, running beneath clusters of fearful houses,
reeling masses of rotten timber; and a few mere stumps of pollard willow
sticking out of the banks of soft mud, only retained in shape of bank by
being shored up with timbers; and boats like paper boats, nearly as thin
at least, for the costermongers to paddle about in among the weeds, the
water soaking through the lath bottoms, and floating the dead leaves
from the vegetable baskets with which they were loaded. Miserable little
back yards, opening to the water, with steep stone steps down to it, and
little platforms for the ducks; and separate duck staircases, composed
of a sloping board with cross bits of wood leading to the ducks’ doors;
and sometimes a flower-pot or two on them, or even a flower--one group,
of wall-flowers and geraniums, curiously vivid, being seen against the
darkness of a dyer’s backyard, who had been dyeing black, and all was
black in his yard but the flowers, and they fiery and pure; the water by
no means so, but still working its way steadily over the weeds, until it
narrowed into a current strong enough to turn two or three windmills,
one working against the side of an old Flamboyant Gothic church, whose
richly traceried buttresses sloped down into the filthy stream; all
exquisitely picturesque, and no less miserable. We delight in seeing
the figures in these boats, pushing them about the bits of blue water,
in Prout’s drawings; but as I looked to-day at the unhealthy face and
melancholy mien of the man in the boat pushing his load of peat along
the ditch, and of the people, men as well as women, who sat spinning
gloomily at the cottage doors, I could not help feeling how many persons
must pay for my picturesque subject and happy walk.”
In his “Miscellaneous Studies” Walter Pater says: “The builders of the
Church seem to have projected no very noticeable towers; though it is
conventional to regret their absence, especially with visitors from
England, where indeed cathedral and other towers are apt to be good and
really make their mark.... The great western towers are lost in the west
front, the grandest, perhaps the earliest, of its species--three
profound sculptured portals; a double gallery above, the upper gallery
carrying colossal images of twenty-two kings of the house of Judah,
ancestors of our Lady; then the great rose; above it the singers’
gallery, half marking the gable of the nave, and uniting at their
topmost storeys the twin, but not exactly equal or similar towers, oddly
oblong in plan as if meant to carry pyramids or spires. In most cases,
those early Pointed churches are entangled, here and there, by the
construction of the old round-arched style, the heavy, Norman or other,
Romanesque chapel or aisle, side by side, though in strange contrast,
with the soaring new Gothic nave or transept. But the older manner of
the round arch, the _plein-cintre_, Amiens has nowhere or almost
nowhere, a trace. The Pointed style, fully pronounced, but in all the
purity of its first period, found here its completest expression.”
Chapter Three
LÂON, RHEIMS AND SOISSONS
“We passed Lâon in the dark,” is a confession frequently made by
travellers. The Geneva express used to stop here for dinner, and during
the brief interval allowed for coffee and cigarettes many a traveller
has gazed up at the great buttressed hill, silhouetted against a
twilight sky, and wondered what manner of place it might be,
half-fortress, half-church, rising some three hundred and fifty feet out
of the plain with its crest of towers and houses.
If Paris is the type of the island cities of Gaul, surely Lâon may be
called the type of the hill cities. “Lâon is the very pride of that
class of town which out of Gaulish hill-forts grew into Roman and
mediæval cities. None stands so proudly on its height; none has kept its
ancient character so little changed to our own day. The town still keeps
itself within the walls which fence in the hill-top, and whatever there
is of suburb has grown up at the foot, apart from the ancient city.”
Geologically, Lâon is a limestone island in the denuded plain of
Soissonais and Béarnais, and was a Celtic stronghold, as its name, a
contraction of _Laudunum_, shows, _dun_ standing for a hill fortress.
The town resembles in plan a blunt crescent, one horn of which is
occupied by the cathedral and citadel. An electric railway connects the
upper with the lower town, and a street from the market-place leads
through the Parvis to the very beautiful west façade of the church.
Cathedral, strictly speaking, it is no longer, for at Lâon we have
another of those instances, always somewhat melancholy, of a deserted
bishopstool. Here it is almost more pathetic, when we remember that the
Bishop of Lâon was second in importance only to the Archbishop of Rheims
himself, and, going back to the days of William Longsword, we find Lâon
not only a bishopric, but a capital town--one of the great trio of
cities which ruled northern France and fought amongst themselves for the
chief mastery. There was the Duke of Paris in his capital; there was the
Duke of the Normans, an outsider who by force of arms had settled at
Rouen, and was a source of continual trembling to the Parisian duchy;
and there was the King of the Franks on the hill-top at Lâon, nominally
suzerain of both the others, but really in daily fear lest one or other,
or both, should swoop down and storm his hill-fortress and add the
royal city of Lâon to lands which in those days went to any man who
could get possession of them.
Tradition says that St. Béat, who lived towards the close of the third
century, gathered his faithful together in a small chapel hewn out of
the rock, over which was built later on the cathedral church of Notre
Dame. This church, according to M. Daboval, seems to have been still in
existence in the fifth century, and was even then of sufficient
importance to attract thither many scholars who wished to study the Holy
Scriptures. In the twelfth century the cathedral, Bishop’s palace, and
many other churches were burnt down, owing to communal troubles during
the bishopric of Gaudry. The present cathedral has one specially
distinctive feature: the east end, instead of being apsidal, follows the
English type of a square termination. There are other churches in the
neighbourhood built on a similar plan, which suggests the possibility of
English architects having been engaged in their construction. Lâon is,
however, in one important feature, a variant from the common arrangement
in English churches of the eastern wall. It has there a great circular
window only, instead of the immense wall of glass usually adopted in
this country. The bays of the aisles are four-storied, in pairs, with
alternating piers, and of great beauty, the ribs of the vaulting
springing from clusters of light shafts. There is a large ambulatory
over the aisles, “which are built up in two stories, both of them
vaulted, and the upper vaulted aisle giving valuable abutment to the
clerestory wall.” This internal arrangement appears to have been in
favour with the architects of the early French Gothic style.
The twenty-eight side chapels are enclosed by some very lovely screens
of a later date, which, being erected during the latter part of the
sixteenth century, and of Renaissance design, are considered by the
ultra-Gothic mind to clash with the rest of the cathedral. Nevertheless
they are very beautiful in proportion and appropriateness, reticent in
design, and admirable in execution.
Viollet-le-Duc, in his review of the cathedral of Lâon, says that it has
a certain ring of democracy and is not of that religious aspect that
attaches to Chartres, Amiens, or Rheims. From the distance it has more
the appearance of a château than of a church: its nave is low when
compared with other Gothic naves, and its general outside appearance
shows evidence of something brutal and savage; and as far as its
colossal sculptures of animals, oxen and horses, which appear to guard
the upper parts of the towers, are concerned, they combine to give an
impression more of terror than of a religious sentiment. One does not
feel, as one regards Notre Dame de Lâon, the stamp of an advanced
civilisation, as at Paris or at Amiens. Everything is rude and rough; it
is the monument of a people enterprising and energetic and full of great
virility. They are the same men as are seen building elsewhere in the
neighbourhood--a race of giants.
As we approach Rheims from Paris, Lâon, or Soissons, there is very
little sign of the vineyards which one associates with the champagne
country. The “vine-clad” hills lie to the south in the Epernay district.
Here to the north of the city we see only well-watered, well-timbered
country, lush meadow-lands, and even market-gardens, reminding us more
of the upper reaches of the Thames valley than of a wine-growing
country.
Rheims chiefly recommends itself to the English mind as the place where
the kings of France were crowned. It would seem also as though the fact
of being crowned at Rheims was a patent of royalty, so to speak, to the
kings themselves, since, as Freeman remarks, their rights were never
disputed after their anointing with the _sainte ampoule_. “Every king of
the French crowned at Rheims,” he says, “has been at once a Frenchman by
birth and the undisputed heir of the founder of the dynasty. Hugh and
his son Robert, neither of them born to royalty, were crowned, the one
at Noyon, the other at Orléans. Henry the Fourth, the one king whose
right was disputed, was crowned at Chartres.”
[Illustration: THE RAMPARTS, LÂON]
Like Soissons, like Lâon, like Bourges even, Rheims has carried down to
modern times the remains of that prestige which must always attach to a
royal city, even though the royalty have long ago departed from it. It
moreover brings us once again to the story of Joan the Maid. It is the
scene of her mission’s fulfilment, of France’s triumph, of the beginning
of that monarchy which Louis XI. established in its complete form and
which the later Bourbons wrecked; and here, when the crown is safe on
her king’s head and Charles VII. has his own again, does Joan ask her
reward--permission to return to her flocks in the fields of Domrémy. And
but that this boon was too simple to grant, Joan’s story might have
ended with this, her greatest triumph, instead of in the market-place at
Rouen.
After the relief of Orléans, Joan had captured Jargeau and Beaugency,
and defeated the English in a great fight at Patay, in which Talbot, the
English leader, was taken prisoner. Having cleared these last obstacles
from Charles’s path, she now set forth to tell him that all was ready
and to persuade him to make all speed to Rheims. Speed, however, was
what the Dauphin either could not or would not make; and it is always
the most unsatisfactory part of the history of Joan the Maid that when
she had pressed on, scarcely resting by night or day, to win back his
kingdom for him, Charles seemed in no hurry to enter upon his honours,
but preferred dawdling with his favourites in Touraine; and it was with
the greatest difficulty that he was persuaded to ride to Rheims with
Joan. Selfish indulgence, foolish favouritism, petty jealousies--were
such things as these to stand in the path from which the Maid had swept
all other barriers? Joan, however, was resolute. In hopes of rousing him
she withdrew her army into the country, and this retreat had the desired
effect. Charles the Laggard allowed himself to be brought into Rheims,
and on July 17 Joan, banner in hand, stood by his side in the cathedral
while the Archbishop anointed him with the holy oil and crowned him
Charles VII. of France. Here, so far as Rheims is concerned, the story
of Joan is at an end.
Two papal councils were held at Rheims, in the days when the Gallican
Church was rising to its highest power, though it had not yet gone so
far as to resent the yoke of the Papacy. Pope Leo IX. in 1049 entered
the city in full state to consecrate for Abbot Heremas his newly-built
monastery of Saint Remi, and followed up the consecration by convoking
a vast synod composed of nearly every prelate in Europe, archbishops,
bishops, abbots, clergy, and laity from every quarter, who sat at Rheims
for six days; but their business seems to have been connected only with
the usual canonical laws. The later council, which took place in 1119
and was presided over by Calixtus, appears to have occupied itself
chiefly with quarrels between Henry of England and Louis of France on
matters not even ecclesiastical. It further confirmed the Truce of God
which had been imposed at Caen sixty years before, and patched up a
peace between the two kings, after an interview between Henry and
Calixtus at Gisors, in which the English king took care to make his case
good before the Pope and to represent that all his incursions upon the
territory of Louis had been made solely from religious motives.
Rheims boasts as one of its early bishops the saint Remigius, who in the
fifth century baptised Clovis here with great pomp, and who received
from heaven, as the legend has it, a flask of oil wherewith to anoint
his king before admitting him into the Church, with the stern
injunction, “Burn now that which thou hast worshipped and worship that
which thou hast burnt.” This flask was preserved as one of the Church’s
most precious relics until the general devastation at the time of the
Revolution, when it was broken to pieces by a fanatic. At the time of
the consecration of Charles X. it reappeared in a mysterious fashion,
and is now shown in the Trésor of the cathedral with various other
relics.
It is a sad fact to record that the most beautiful cathedral façade ever
built is now almost entirely hidden by scaffolding necessary for the
restoration of the building; and, judging by the appearance of the
timbering and the paucity of workmen, it is not yesterday that the work
was commenced, nor is it by to-morrow that it will be completed.
[Illustration: LÂON FROM THE BOULEVARDS]
In the early part of the thirteenth century Robert de Coucy was
entrusted with the rebuilding of the cathedral after the complete
destruction of the early church by fire. He built it on a simple plan of
a vast choir, no transepts, and a rather narrow nave. “Cet édifice a
toute la force de la Cathédral de Chartres, sans en avoir la lourdeur;
il réunit enfin les veritables conditions de la beauté dans les arts, la
puissance et la grace; il est d’ailleurs construit en beaux materiaux,
savamment appareillés, et l’on retrouve dans toutes ses parties un soin
et une recherche fort rares à une epoque où l’on batissait avec une
grande rapidité et souvent avec des ressources
insuffisantes.”--Viollet-le-Duc. The beautiful portals, “deep and
cavernous,” record by their thousand sculptures, in a clear and
impressive manner, the creation of the world, the whole history of the
Old Testament, the life of our Saviour and the redemption of mankind,
and convey to all who pass by this great object-lesson of their faith.
The tympana of these porches are glazed instead of being filled in with
stone. This was done to guard against the possible breaking of the
doorway lintel, which, if large, might very well give way under the
weight of the superincumbent mass of stone.
Mr. Bond, referring to the deeply recessed porches of the French
cathedrals--which, if we exclude the Galilees, find few analogues in the
English churches--considers them as lineal descendants of the ancient
narthex. “As a rule we did not care to develop the western doorways. The
reason may be that our churches are all comparatively low; to give west
doorways, therefore, any considerable elevation would be at the expense
of the western windows. We needed western light badly in our English
naves, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and preferred
to develop the western window at the expense of the western doorway,
reaching in the end such a façade as that of St. George’s, Windsor.”
The bays of the nave consist of large clerestory windows filled with
glorious deep blue glass, a small triforium and stilted pier arches; a
very short chancel of only two bays and chevet hardly gives room for the
priests and choristers, the sacrarium is therefore lengthened westwards
and projects into the transepts.
To the south of the Cathedral lies the interesting Abbey Church of St.
Remi, built in the eleventh century. Many of the French cathedral towns
are fortunate in the possession of either an abbey or collegiate church,
which existed some two or three centuries before the cathedral itself
was built. At Nevers is the church of St. Etienne, at Evreux St. Taurin,
at Tours St. Martin. At Angers and other places the old Romanesque
basilicas are still to be found. Rheims has for its parent church the
basilica of St. Remi. The western towers are Romanesque, and one of them
has been left more or less unrestored; the interior has all the
impressiveness of the basilica design; the pier arcades and triforium of
the nave elevation occupy the whole space up to the springing of the
barrel vault, and pilasters are carried down to the pier capitals, where
they rest on quaint corbels of very early design. Like churches
constructed in the early days, St. Remi has double aisles on either side
of the nave; the choir is brought westwards to overlap the nave arches,
an arrangement often found in short chancelled churches; the east end is
periapsidal in plan, and the windows are filled with fine blue glass.
Ferguson does not give France the credit of having many fine Romanesque
churches sufficient to satisfy the splendid tastes of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, but he makes an exception in the case of St. Remi,
and declares it to be “a vast and noble basilica of the early part of
the eleventh century, presenting considerable points of similarity to
those of Burgundy.”
Rheims has enjoyed for a long time popularity amongst travellers. As far
back as a hundred and twenty years ago a writer, describing the town and
its hotel accommodation, says: “The streets are almost all broad, strait
and well built, equal in that respect to any I have seen; and the inn,
the Hôtel de Moulinet, is so large and well served as not to check the
emotions raised by agreeable objects, by giving an impulse to contrary
vibrations in the bosom of the traveller, which at inns in France is too
often the case.... We have about half a dozen real English dishes that
exceed anything in my opinion to be met with in France; by English
dishes I mean a turbot and lobster sauce, ham and chicken, a haunch of
venison, turkey and oysters, and after these there is an end of an
English table. It is an idle prejudice to class roast beef among them,
for there is not better beef in the world than at Paris.... The French
are cleaner in their persons, and the English in their houses.”
* * * * *