sermon, upon a subject chosen at random, in the salon of the Hôtel
Rambouillet, when hardly out of his teens; and the Marquis de
Feuquières, who had introduced him into this society of Précieuses, soon
found reason to be proud of his protégé. The young man was destined to
go on as he had begun; a few more years saw him established as Canon of
Metz, the close friend of Condé and of the Calvinist Paul Ferri, with
whom he never tired of disputing theological questions in a perfectly
amicable spirit, acting up to his maxim of “liberty in doubtful things”;
and finally his reputation brought him to Paris, where he preached
during Lent, 1656, and brought before the world the sermon as he created
it, purified from the profanities of an immoral age, strengthened by his
steadfast simplicity, and quickened by the fire of his eloquence.
Bossuet found that in spite of himself his fame as an orator--a fame
after which he had never striven--was firmly established in the capital,
and after he had preached before the king in the chapel of the Louvre
his success was practically assured. Honours and dignities came fast
upon him; he became Bishop of Condom, and in the following year (1670)
was entrusted with the education of the Dauphin, while the Académie
Française opened its doors to his genius, and in 1681 he was appointed
to the See of Meaux. Hardly had Bossuet settled down, however, in the
quiet little _évêché_, with its pleasant green garden, than he was
called out again into the world of noise and controversy. In 1682 Louis
XIV. convoked the famous assembly of clergy to discuss the breach which
had lately disclosed itself between the State of France and the Papacy.
The king contended for the right of patronage over any vacant sees or
benefices, claiming that so long as they remained unoccupied, their
revenues fell due to the Crown; and called together the clergy of the
realm to uphold his right and to draw up a code of rules that should set
a line between spiritual and temporal authority. Bossuet preached the
sermon which was to open the Convocation; and his clear practical sense
and eloquent denunciation of the encroachments of the Papacy destroyed
the remnants of Pope Innocent’s power in France. He summed up the case
in four clauses. First, “That the Pope has no temporal power over
kings”; secondly, “That his spiritual authority is inferior to that of a
general assembly”; thirdly, “That, in consequence, the use of this
authority ought to be regulated by the canons of the Church and by
customs generally approved”; and last, “That the papal decision on
matters of faith is only infallible by consent of the Church.” Thus did
Bossuet establish the privileges and the liberty of the Gallican Church.
As soon as possible the great bishop disengaged himself from the affairs
of the nation, and was occupied, not in gaining fresh honours, but with
the care of his diocese. The picture of his last years is a graceful and
pleasant one, and shows the great man leading the life of a simple
country priest; writing sermons in his study or garden, directing his
convents, schools and hospitals, visiting his poor and sick people, even
catechising the children of Meaux; and at times retiring into the
seclusion of the monastery of La Trappe, to gather strength and courage
for the better fulfilment of his pastoral duties.
The old timber water-mills behind the Town Hall are the outward sign of
one of the great industries of Meaux. They have withstood for many
generations the rushing torrents of the Marne, which threaten to
undermine the starlings and timbers of the mills and to engulf them in
its waters. These for some reason or other are almost as green as the
outpourings of the Rhone at Geneva. It would be interesting to know if
Meaux possessed any feudal right over the neighbouring peasants,
compelling them to come and wait their turn at the mill, and pay
whatever price might be demanded, and forbidding them, even in times of
heavy yield, to get their corn ground elsewhere. Such oppressions
actually existed in the villages attached to the great châteaux, where
the seigneur had a right to keep huge rabbit-warrens and pigeon-houses,
whose inhabitants devastated, year in, year out, the surrounding crops
of the peasants.
The little city of Senlis, with its girdle of Roman walls and watch
towers, is one of the most attractive places within reach of Paris. It
is situated about thirty-five miles to the northeast, in the midst of
the great forest land of Hallatte and Chantilly. Until the dissolution
of the Carlovingian empire Senlis enjoyed the privileges of a royal
residence, and, indeed, down to the time of Henri de Navarre the kings
of France continued to visit the city, and were lodged in a castle built
on the site of the Roman prætorium. The ruins of this castle, some of
which date from the eleventh century, may still be seen among the
attractions of Senlis; and of even greater interest are the Roman
ramparts which surround the town and which were built when it still held
its position as the township of the Silvanectes. These walls,
“twenty-three feet high and thirteen feet thick, are, with those of St.
Lizier (Ariège) and Bourges, the most perfect in France. They enclosed
an oval area 1024 feet long from east to west and 794 feet wide from
north to south. At each of the angles formed by the broken lines of
which the circuit of 2756 feet is composed, stands or stood a tower;
numbering originally twenty-eight and now only sixteen, they are
semicircular in plan, and up to the height of the wall are unpierced.
The Roman city had only two gates; the present number is five.”
As one approaches the town from the station through the boulevard, the
Renaissance tower of Saint Pierre and the beautiful _flèche_ of the
Cathedral stand right ahead. The first of these two churches is now
desecrated and converted into a large market hall, having previously
been used as cavalry barracks. It is short and broad, having only three
bays to the nave, two to the choir, and an apse of three lights; but it
has one very marked feature, which is also seen, though to a lesser
extent, in the Cathedral of Saint Gatien at Tours--the axis of the choir
trends northwards, making with the nave an angle of some seventeen to
twenty degrees. There is a certain amount of early Gothic work worth
notice, but the prevailing style is Flamboyant; in the two last side
chapels of the choir some curious vaulting is to be found, resembling
rude attempts at fan tracery with heavy keyed pendants.
The Cathedral of Notre-Dame covers during its construction a period of
some four hundred years, and is probably only part of what was
originally designed. The glory of the building is the beautiful spire to
the south-west tower. Rising from a base octagonal in plan, the angles
are lightened by detached pillars supporting a pyramidal canopy; the
upper dormer windows are high and lancet-shaped, with the back of their
gables sloping downwards and forming a sharp angle with the richly
crocketed spire. Internally the church is a mixed product of the
Transition and Flamboyant architects; the large clerestory windows may
have been rebuilt later when the vaulting was constructed. In the
ambulatory behind the altar the twelfth-century capitals remain, showing
archaic Romanesque sculpture; and traces of this early work are to be
found in many other parts of the building. The large west door is of the
Chartres type; in the tympanum are the figures of our Lord and the
Virgin Mary, with a representation of the resurrection of the dead; some
of the figures are flying upwards, while others are being tenderly
awakened by angels swinging censers.
[Illustration: SENLIS]
Long before the train arrives at Beauvais the Cathedral is seen like a
huge fortress in the distance, overtopping the quiet, modest landscape
of the Thérain valley; and its great size is more acutely felt as one
approaches its south doorway along the streets of little white-painted
houses and shop-fronts. The immediate effect of the interior of this
marvellous building is startling. Whatever emotion has been aroused in
the architectural traveller by the glories of Amiens, Chartres, or
Bourges, is for the moment entirely eclipsed by the first view of the
choir of Beauvais, whose clerestory windows soar upwards with such a
restless vitality as almost to pierce the vaulting. These choir bays
look like shafts of masonry so elongated, so delicate, that one trembles
for their stability. And this sensation gradually increases. The sense
of strength and repose gives way to a feeling that this great “church in
the air” is struggling against dissolution, and that its vast flying
buttresses are only just sufficient to withstand the tremendous strain
that is constantly being exerted on the building. It is only fair,
however, to the architect of Beauvais choir to say that he was hampered
by the want of means and probably also by the insufficient site assigned
to him for the planning out of his Cathedral. Had he worked under more
favourable conditions he would have accomplished “an incomparable work,”
for it is not, as Viollet-le-Duc remarks, “the theory” that was fatal to
its construction, but the execution, which is poor and mediocre. The
lesson learnt from the Beauvais architect’s temerity on the one hand,
and from his beautiful disposition of plan on the other, was of the
greatest value to the designers of other Cathedrals executed at the same
time--notably that of Cologne, which was constructed more or less
contemporaneously with Beauvais.
West of the Cathedral is the _Basse Œuvre_, a building which
Fergusson describes as an example of the Latin style, and a
stepping-stone from the Roman basilica to the Gothic church. This
intermediate style is noticeable in the Romanesque church of S. Vicenzo
alle Fontane in Rome, where the bay is divided simply into pier arch and
clerestory, showing in very simple terms an arrangement nearly
approaching to Gothic.
Of the history of Beauvais there is but little to be said, for it
possesses none worthy of the name, or rather--since every town must have
a story of some kind--none which associates itself to any great degree
with outside events. It was established in the Roman era as the capital
of the Bellovaci, under the name of Cæsaromagus; it was Christianised
by Saint Lucian, who for his good works suffered martyrdom within the
town; and later on it became the head of a countship. This dignity,
however, Beauvais did not long retain, for in the tenth century the
temporal power of the count was vested in the spiritual power of the
bishop, and any celebrity which the town may have attained was
henceforth of purely ecclesiastical order.
It did, however, play a prominent part in the peasant revolt known as
the “Jacquerie” in the fourteenth century. A body of peasants, “without
any leader,” says Froissart, rose up with the intent to exterminate the
upper classes--a forerunner of the Revolution--and perpetrated the most
horrible atrocities upon every knight and noble they could lay hands on
in Beauvais. “They said that the nobles of the kingdom of France,
knights and squires, were a disgrace to it, and that it would be a very
meritorious act to destroy them all; to which proposition every one
assented as a truth, and added, shame befall him who should be the means
of preventing the gentlemen from being wholly destroyed.”
When the revolt grew, instead of being crushed, the “gentlemen of
Beauvoisie” were forced to send for help out of France, since matters
were come to such a pass that “in the bishoprics of Noyon, Lâon and
Soissons, there were upwards of one hundred castles and good houses of
knights and squires destroyed.” Aid soon came, notably from Flanders,
Hainault and Navarre, the king of Navarre especially signalising himself
by putting three thousand rebels to death in one day. “When they were
asked,” says the chronicler, “for what reason they acted so wickedly,
they replied they knew not, but they did so because they saw others do
it; and they thought that by this means they should destroy all the
nobles and gentlemen in the world.”
Edward III. besieged Beauvais in 1346, but without success, and it only
fell into English hands in 1420 through the treachery of Bishop Pierre
Cauchon, whose name also appears as one of the witnesses against Joan of
Arc at Rouen eleven years later. The memory of this latter offence so
preyed upon his mind that when he became bishop of Lisieux--having
presumably been ejected from the see of Beauvais--Couchon sought to
expiate his sin by dedicating a chapel to the Virgin in the Cathedral of
Saint Pierre.
Hearing of the siege of Compiègne by the Burgundian forces, Joan had
left Charles’s army, which was still dawdling by the Loire in a state of
inaction, and marched off to Compiègne to relieve his party there.
Arrived without the town, she soon headed a sortie against the
Burgundians; they were driven back, and it is probable that the
expedition would have been attended by the success which, to do her
justice, had up to this moment crowned the efforts of the Maid, had not
a body of Englishmen come up unexpectedly between her and the town and
driven her into a corner. She was of course speedily captured. As soon
as the news reached Paris both the University and the Vicar of the
Inquisition demanded her person. Cauchon, however, stood firm. The Maid,
he contended, had been captured within the diocese of Beauvais, and he,
as the foremost prelate of the English party, claimed the right of
putting her on trial; and after having paid to Burgundy 10,000 livres
for this right, sent the Maid to Rouen, there to stand on her trial for
sorcery, before a court of which Cauchon was president; and this fact
alone might reasonably destroy all hope for poor Joan.
Another fourteenth-century bishop of Beauvais brought his diocese before
the world in no small degree. Jean de Dormans was not only bishop; he
became Chancellor of France, and obtained from Rome the rank of a
cardinal, under the title of the Four Crowned Saints. In Paris Dormans
endowed a foundation which still bears the name of Collège de Beauvais,
though what remains of the building serves as barracks, and the light of
learning has left its precincts for ever. The old college is now united
to its neighbour, the Collège de Presle; but the fourteenth-century
chapel dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist still stands almost
intact, though it, too, has been desecrated, and now serves the use of
the military occupiers. Formerly there stood within this chapel six
life-size figures, representing three men and three women of the Dormans
family, and it is believed that when mediæval fragments were pieced
together to form the chapel of Abélard and Héloise, which is now part of
the burial-ground of Père-la-Chaise, the figure of one of these ladies
of the fourteenth century was used to represent that of Héloise.
One name there is on the page of their history which the inhabitants of
this town remember with a veneration almost equal to that which the
Orléannais regard Joan of Arc, and whose memory even now receives an
annual tribute. It is that of another Jeanne, poor and obscure, who rose
to heroism in the moment of her city’s danger, and who, though she did
not lead a mighty host to victory nor bring a monarch back to his own,
yet saved her city from the encroachments of Burgundy, and gave the
women of Beauvais a right to their country’s esteem. The besieging army
of Charles the Bold probably never received such a surprise as on that
day in the year of grace 1472, when Jeanne Hachette led her
_concitoyennes_ through the streets of Beauvais, menaced the foe from
the ramparts, and actually bore away with her own hands one of the
Burgundian standards. The banner is still kept in the Hôtel-de-Ville;
and every year, on the feast of Ste. Angadrème, a grand procession
marches through the streets, in which the women are given the right of
precedence over the men, in memory of the brave deeds of Jeanne and her
sisters.
Chapter Eighteen
PARIS AND SOME OF ITS CHURCHES
As a Cathedral city, Paris hardly comes within the scheme of this book.
It has been written about so much and so often, and occupies, both
architecturally and historically, such a position as would scarcely
justify any but a full and detailed description. This great city, the
living, moving source of one of the greatest nations of to-day, and at
one time the mainspring of Europe itself, is not to be passed over with
a few terse remarks; it is as though one tried to compress the history
of France itself into a single chapter. On the one hand, a short sketch
can hardly hope to do justice to Paris; on the other, to describe it at
such length as it deserves would not be dealing fairly by the lesser
towns, and further, this length would be so great as to render absurd
its inclusion in a book of traveller’s notes. Rather let it be regarded
here in the light of _point d’appui_ from which other places may be
visited which do not lie on the direct route from Paris to the
provinces. Without attempting any architectural description, however, it
may be as well, before we pass outside the city walls, to mention three
churches within Paris of which illustrations are given here, and to
offer the briefest possible outline of their early history and
foundation, as well as that of the great city of which they form a part.
“Paris did not, like London, simply grow into the capital of a kingdom
already existing. The city created first the county and then the
kingdom, of which it was successively the head.” In those days Paris
ranked no higher than Soissons, Sens, Lâon, Orléans, or Rouen; and in
ecclesiastical dignity it was inferior to some of them, being, it is
true, an episcopal see, but not a metropolitan. Certainly, as we have
seen, it was approved as a military station by Cæsar, and beloved as a
residence by Julian; and the great position the city now holds in modern
Europe and the modern world is rather apt to bias our estimate of these
early honours, which were undoubtedly shared by many other of the Gallic
cities. Because Paris is now a metropolitan see, the centre of political
and social France, we have a tendency to think that in all times the
city must have ruled her neighbour towns in this way; whereas it was
only by very slow degrees--long after it had become the seat of royalty
and the nominal capital of France--that Paris acquired an influence
beyond the bounds of her own territories. The great lords of Burgundy,
of Aquitaine, of Anjou, of Champagne--they were vassals to the king,
they paid him homage, they gave him their military service, but they and
their domains formed no part of France; they were almost as separate
from any head or centre as were the wide-scattered Teutonic states east
of the Rhine. Nor was this felt to be in any way a disadvantage; the
kings in Paris would doubtless have welcomed the firm allegiance of
these kings in all but name, because it would have meant a fresh access
of power, an added strength wherewith to face their other foes; but no
idea of national unity had any place in their calculation. Paris had
made for herself a dominion, and the time was to come when that dominion
should stretch from the sea on the north, south and west, to the river
and to the mountains on the east; but as yet that time had not arrived.
[Illustration: THE PONT MARIE, PARIS]
One more event which took place after Paris became the capital of France
may be recorded here. This is the attempted siege in the days of Joan of
Arc, which followed as the sequel to the king’s coronation at Rheims.
Having subdued so many cities in the north of France, and given to
Charles VII. the crown of his ancestors, it was but natural that Joan
should be anxious to lead him in triumph into his capital, which at
present declared for the enemy, and was occupied by Cardinal Beaufort’s
English troops and the army of Burgundy. The newly-crowned king,
however, apparently considered that he had borne his share of the burden
in the late proceedings at Rheims, and seemed in no hurry to march upon
Paris. Riding through the smaller towns, seeing their gates flung open
wide to him, and receiving the homage and acclamations of the people,
were occupations far more congenial to his indolent tastes than
bestirring himself to take the field again; and to their infinite
annoyance Joan and d’Alençon perceived that he was gradually but surely
working his way down to his castles on the Loire, from whose pleasant
meadows they knew well that he would never return. The only wonder is
that the Maid did not lose all patience and leave this dilatory prince
to his fate. Instead of this she set out with the Duc d’Alençon to Saint
Denis, leaving Charles at Compiègne, whence he followed them, “very sore
against his will,” as far as Senlis. Meanwhile each day of delay gave
the English time to strengthen their position within the capital; and
Joan found that having brought the king to Senlis was by no means the
same thing as conquering his unwillingness to strike what she and her
party believed might be, if rightly directed, the final blow. Each time
the Maid and d’Alençon set out to invest Paris, messages came from the
royal camp, commanding them to desist and return to Saint Denis. Finally
the truth came out; the king cared more for peace and ease on the Loire
than for glory in war, and desired to leave the camp. Had Joan believed
less firmly in the divine right of kings, it is probable that she would
have rebelled and besieged Paris on her own responsibility; on the other
hand, had Charles been left to the counsels of d’Alençon and the brave
captains Dunois and La Hire, there is reason to suppose that he might
have been persuaded to follow where Joan led, and might under her
guidance have subdued Paris in a very short time. But there were the
king’s favourites to reckon with, and these were not men of war, but of
peace, and not always of peace with honour--the foolish La Tremouille
and the crafty Archbishop of Rheims, one of Joan’s worst opposers--and
these advisers easily worked upon the king’s indolent good-nature to
find in the eagerness of the Maid an undue desire for fresh conquest. As
it was, Joan saw nothing before her but to obey the man to whom, as she
believed, God had given the right to go or stay, to fight or to lie in
peace, as his Majesty chose. She went to the statue of the Virgin at
Saint Denis, bearing her armour; and there, kneeling in the church, she
dedicated to Our Lady of Victories the helmet, hauberk and coat of mail
in which she had done so many great feats of arms; and then rose and
followed her king on his journey to the pleasant lands of the Loire.
The early history of Paris lies buried in the unrecorded pages of the
life of primæval man. Its origin is humble in comparison with that of
other capitals, although it bears a strong analogy to those surrounding
physical conditions to which Venice owed its existence. Its cradle,
according to M. Hoffbauer, _Paris à traverse les ages_, was a small
narrow island in the middle of the young Seine, which had then cut for
itself its channel through the alluvial plains which had been left by
the retiring sea towards the end of the Geological Tertiary period at
the close of the glacial epoch. It was part of a group of five islands,
of which three very soon disappeared, their soil being probably used
either for embankments or for purposes of defence. As in the great
estuary leading up to the morass surrounding London, many changes had
been wrought by the hand of man in the general appearance of the Paris
basin. It is true that the great embankments constructed by the Romans
to keep the waters of the Thames within defined limits are not to be
traced in the valley of the Seine, yet the rude habitations of wattle
huts built on whatever hillocks were attainable entailed embankments to
a certain extent which should keep the Seine within its bounds at times
of extraordinary flood. As it stands to-day Paris is in one of the most
fertile parts of the territory; it is on the banks of a great river
which brings to it by its main stream and by its affluents the tribute
of the richest provinces; it is surrounded by materials most necessary
for the construction of its public and private edifices; and it is
endowed by nature with all the fruitful resources tending towards the
aggrandisement both of power and fortune.
The condition of the early inhabitants of the Paris basin was that of
one continual warfare against the denizens of the jungle, which with its
rich and abundant vegetation covered the surrounding country. Caverns
and other places chosen for their abodes were disputed with lions,
hyenas and tigers. The chase was their only means of subsistence (the
art of husbandry being entirely unknown), and the number of stone
hatchets and harpoons, fishing-hooks, lances, &c., found deeply buried
in the alluvial soil, bear testimony to the struggle for existence
amongst the early inhabitants of the Seine valley.
Cæsar, when he was appointed commander of the Gauls in B.C. 59, found
their central point of Paris inhabited by a Cymric or Celtic population,
which he calls Gauls in his language but Celts in their own, and
separated from the Belgæ by the Seine and Marne. Cæsar wrote the place
“Lutetia,” and when he convoked the inhabitants of Gaul to this town the
neighbouring tribe was designated as “Parisii,” and allied to the
powerful clan of the Senones.
With reference to the meaning of the word “Parisii,” M. Bulet, in the
“Dictionnaire Celtique,” says that “bar” or “par” means in Celtic a boat
(_bateau_), and that the low Bretons call the cargo of a boat “far.”
Herodotus (book ii., 96), in his description of the method of floating
boats down stream on the Nile by means of a raft fastened on in front
with a stone dragging behind, calls the boat “baris,” and says that some
of them are many thousand talents burthen. They were probably
flat-bottomed, and similar to those now seen on the rivers. The Celtic
word “par,” signifying a boat, might well have produced the name
Parisii, meaning boatmen, men who passed all their life in the “baris.”