laws, which Charlemagne himself encouraged, referring to the treatment
of pilgrims by the hospices which were so generally established
throughout Charlemagne's realm in Carlovingian times.
To the ordinary fine for murder there was added sixty _soldi_ more if
the person killed were a pilgrim to or from a hospice. Any who denied
food and shelter to a pilgrim was fined three _soldi_. These were the
regulations put into effect through Charlemagne's dominions at the
suggestion of Pepin II.
[Illustration]
XXVIII
LIÈGE
The natural highway from Antwerp and Brussels to the Rhine lies through
Liège and Aix-la-Chapelle, or Aachen, as the Germans call the latter.
Wordsworth, in his wonderful travel poem, wrote of the Meuse, which
flows by Liège on its way to the Royal Ardennes, in a way which should
induce many sated travellers to follow in his footsteps, and know
something of the fascinating charm of this most fertile and perhaps the
most picturesque of all the rivers of Europe.
"What lovelier home could gentle fancy choose?
In this the stream, whose cities, heights and plains,
War's favourite playground, are with crimson stains
Familiar, as the morn with pearly dews.
* * * * *
"How sweet the prospect of yon watery glade,
With its gray locks clustering in pensive shade,
That, shap'd like old monastic turrets, rise,
From the smooth meadow ground serene and still."
As one journeys on to Liège, Roman influences have left many and visible
remains.
Crossing the plain of Neervinden, one enters the province of the
Liègeois, where the French were defeated by the Austrians in 1793, thus
releasing Belgium from the Gallic yoke.
At Landen one recalls that it is the town of the inception of the family
of Charlemagne which gave to France her second race of kings.
Liège has been called the Birmingham of Continental Europe. It might
better be called one of the foremost industrial centres of the world,
for such it is to-day.
It is beautifully placed in an amphitheatre-like valley, and its tall
chimneys, its smoke, and its grind of wheels bespeak an activity and
unrest of which the former ages knew not.
Formerly the Liègeois were a turbulent and truculent folk, if one is to
believe history.
If, however, one does not care to go back to history, he might turn to
the pages of "Quentin Durward" and read of the spirit of romance which
once surrounded Liège and its people.
The famous "Legend of the Liègeois" recounts how a working blacksmith
found an inexhaustible supply of coals for his forge through the aid of
a gnomish old man.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW _of LIÈGE_]
Previously the smith's fires had burned low, and only the old man's song
inspired him to forage on the hillside, with the result that the future
prosperity of the city grew up from the accessibility of this
inexhaustible coal supply.
The old man's story ran thus:
"Wine's good in wintry weather.
Up the hillside near the heather,
Go and gather the black earth,
It shall give your fire birth.
Ill fares the hide when the buckler wants mending,
Ill fares the plough when the coulter wants tending."
When Liège, through its prosperity, had grown to good proportions, its
government was assigned to a sort of prelate-proprietor.
These princely prelates were often but lads of eighteen or twenty, who
became identified with the Church, frequently enough, simply because of
the power it gave them.
The craftsmen and artisans of the city bought many rights from time to
time from the bishops, and finally wrested the power from out of the
hands of the Church, much as did the burghers of other cities from
their feudal lords.
Then followed the struggle, which in Flanders raged perhaps more
bitterly than elsewhere in Europe; the rising, where the many fought
against the privileged few, and much riot and bloodshed was caused on
all sides.
Then came first the burgher heroes of Liège, who, like their confrères
in Ghent and Bruges, found in many instances the martyrdom of the
patriot.
In the Place St. Lambert formerly stood--until 1801, when it was removed
after having been damaged by a mob--the former cathedral of St. Lambert,
which took its name from the first bishop of Liège. This ancient
cathedral was of much grandeur and magnificence, attributes which the
present cathedral of St. Paul decidedly lacks.
It was in this venerable cathedral of St. Lambert that Quentin Durward
went to hear mass, as we learn from Scott's novel, and here also, after
the famous siege of Liège by Louis XI. and Charles the Bold, the two
princes themselves repaired for the same purpose. St. Lambert of Liège
and the three Kings of Cologne were, it would appear, the chief patrons
to whom Quentin and his early followers made their vows.
The bishopric was founded by Héraclius in 968, and a church, of which
the present choir is a part, was built upon the site of the present St.
Paul's in the thirteenth century. The see was formerly a suffragan of
Cologne, and the only bishopric in the Low Countries except Tournai and
Utrecht.
The present cathedral is consistently enough a Gothic church, but it is
not a satisfactory example, in spite of its magnificent proportions.
Of a cruciform plan, and with a nave which was only completed in 1528,
it is a poor apology for a great Gothic church, such as we know at Metz,
Nancy, or even at Brussels.
Its western tower, satisfactory enough in itself, is crowned with a
ludicrous spire, which dates only from 1812.
Since St. Lambert's has disappeared, and the present St. Paul's dates
only from the ante-Revolutionary days, the chief ecclesiastical treasure
of the city is the Église St. Jacques. It was founded in 1014 by the
Bishop Baudry II., but the Romanesque tower to the west is of the
century following, and the whole fabric was very much modified in
1513-38.
It is a magnificent flamboyant Gothic church of quite the first rank,
when compared with others of its kind elsewhere.
It has an ample nave and aisles with a polygonal choir and a series of
radiating chapels which are singularly beautiful.
The magnificent north portal is an addition of the sixteenth century.
The interior has been called Spanish in its motive. Certainly it is not
quite like any other Gothic forms we know in these parts, and does bear
some resemblance to that peculiar variety of Gothic which belongs to
Spain.
The choir has some fine glass showing the armorial bearings of former
patrons of the church.
There is a beautiful carved stone staircase and much sculptured
stonework in the choir.
The organ-buffet is ornate, even of its kind,--a masterpiece of
cabinet-making,--and was the work of Andre Severin of Maestricht in
1673.
The left transept, which is some thirty feet longer than the right, has
a fine painting of a "Mater Dolorosa," while, opposite, is a stone
monument to the founder of the church, Baudry II., of Renaissance
workmanship.
St. Jean is another pre-tenth-century foundation of the Bishop Notger,
somewhat after the plan of the "round church" at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was
entirely rebuilt, however, in the eighteenth century, though the
original octagon was kept intact.
At some distance from the city, on a height which may be truly called
dominating, is the church of St. Martin, founded in 962, and
reconstructed, after the Gothic manner of the time, contemporary with
St. Jacques. Of recent times it has been restored. If any separation or
division of its parts can be made, one concludes that the choir is
German, and its nave French.
In 1246 there was held in this church a _Fête Dieu_ following upon a
vision of Ste. Julienne, the abbess of Cornillon near Liège. The fête
was ordained by Pope Urbain IV., who himself had been a canon of the
cathedral of Liège.
Ste. Croix was another of Notger's foundations, in 979, on the site of
an ancient château.
The choir was built toward 1175, and has an octagonal tower with a
gallery of small columns just under the roof, after the manner known as
distinctly Rhenish.
The church exhibits thoroughly that Rhine manner of building which made
combined use of the Gothic and Romanesque,--in bewildering fashion, to
one who has previously known only the comparatively pure types of
France.
The nave and its aisles rise to the same height, but the apsidal choir
is aisleless.
The general effect of the interior is light and graceful, with circular
columns in a blue-gray stone, which is very beautiful.
A series of fourteenth or fifteenth century "Stations of the Cross" fill
the arches of the transepts; quite an unusual arrangement of this
feature, and one which seems well considered.
St. Barthélemy's is Liège's other great church. It is a _basilica_ of
five naves and two Romanesque towers. It dates in reality from the
twelfth century, but has been greatly modernized.
St. Barthélemy's might have been a highly interesting example of a
Romanesque church had it not been desecrated by late Italian details.
St. Barthélemy's has a twelfth-century art treasure in a brazen font,
cast in 1112 by Patras, a brass-founder of Dinant on the Meuse. Its bowl
depicts five baptismal scenes in high relief, each accompanied by a
descriptive legend. Upon the rim of the bowl is the following legend:
"_Bissenis bobus pastorum forma notatur,
Quos et apostolice commendat gratia vite,
Officiiq; gradus quo fluminis impetus bujus
Letificat sanctam purgatis civibus urbem._"
[Illustration]
XXIX
DÜSSELDORF, NEUSS, AND MÜNCHEN-GLADBACH
_Düsseldorf_
Among æsthetic people in general, Düsseldorf is revered--or was revered,
though the time has long since passed--for that style of pictorial art
known to the world as the Düsseldorf School.
A remarkably good collection of pictures remains in its art gallery to
remind us of the fame of Düsseldorf as an art centre, but to-day its art
has become "old-fashioned," and the gay little metropolis has many, if
more worldly, counter attractions.
Düsseldorf takes its name from the little river Düssel which joins the
Rhine at this point.
The French guide-books call Düsseldorf the "_plus coquettes des bords du
Rhin_"; and so it really is, for few tourists go there for its churches
alone, though they are by no means squalid or inferior.
The city was the residence of the Counts, afterward the Dukes, of
Berg--for it was made a duchy by the Emperor Wenceslaus--from the end of
the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.
In 1806 Napoleon made it the capital of a new Grand Duchy of Berg in
favour of Joachim Murat. By the treaty of 1815 Düsseldorf fell to
Prussia, and became the chief town of the regency of Düsseldorf, and the
seat of a superior court of justice.
Occupying the site that it does, on the banks of a great waterway, the
city naturally became the centre of an important commerce.
Düsseldorf is the birthplace of many who have borne great names; of the
philosopher Jacobi and his poet brother; the Baron de Hompesch, the last
grand master of the Order of Malta; Von Ense, the eminent litterateur;
the poet Heinrich Heine (who died at Paris in 1855), and the painters
Cornelius, Lenzen, and Achenbach.
The principal church edifice is that dedicated to St. Lambert, the
Hofkirche. It has a strong and hardy tower, very tall, and surmounted by
a slate-covered spire. The ogival style predominates, and the fabric
dates mostly from the fourteenth century. Its chief feature is its
choir, which is far more ample and beautiful than the nave. The rest of
the edifice fails to express any very high ideals of church-building.
At the foot of the apside, behind the choir, is a mausoleum erected in
the seventeenth century for the elector, John Wilhelm, who died in 1690.
In the ambulatory of the choir is, on the left, a florid Gothic
tabernacle, and by the second pillar of the nave is a colossal statue of
St. Christopher. There are many tombs of Jacobeans, and of the Dukes of
Berg.
There are also a number of paintings by Düsseldorf artists scattered
about the church, but they have not the qualities exhibited by the old
Flemish masters, and are hardly worthy of remark.
On the exterior of the southern wall is affixed an immense Calvary,
which is theatrical in the extreme, and is not dignified nor churchly.
The Jesuit church is not remarkable architecturally, but there are a
number of tombs therein of the princes of the house of Neubourg.
The ruins of the ancient château of Düsseldorf suggest but faintly its
former glories before it was destroyed by the French bombardment of the
city in the eighteenth century.
It has been restored, in a way, but with little regard for historical
traditions, and a part of the edifice was made the home of the famous
Düsseldorf academy of painting, founded in 1777 by Charles Theodore and
reëstablished in 1822. It gave birth to a celebrated school of painting,
now all but dead. Among the famous and well-known names connected
therewith are: Cornelius, Schadow, Lessing, Schirmer, Hildebrand, and
Koehler; the American, Lentzen; the Norwegians, Tiédemann and Gude; the
landscape painters, Weber and Fay; and the historical painters, Knaus,
Hübner, and Scheuren; and finally the celebrated engraver, Keller.
The museum and the gallery of paintings are still superb, and form a
contribution to the history of the art of all ages which would be quite
incomplete without it.
There are ten churches in Düsseldorf, and a synagogue, but in truth
there is not much of interest in them all, and the "handsomest city of
Germany" must rest its fame on something more than its appeal to the
lover of churches.
_Neuss_
There is not much about the compact, though rather ungainly, little city
of Neuss to interest any but the lover of churches, though its history
is very ancient, and the development of its patronymic through
_Novesium_, _Niusa_, and _Nova Castra_ bespeaks volumes for the part it
has played in the past.
Its origin dates back to the time of Drusus, and it is mentioned by
Tacitus as the winter quarters of the Roman Army. The city was ravaged
by Attila in 451, and by the Normans in the ninth century. Emperor
Philip of Suabia captured it in 1206, and gave it to the Archbishop of
Cologne. A chapter of nobles was founded here in 825, and Count Evrard
of Clèves and Bertha, his wife, erected, in the first years of the
thirteenth century, its principal church dedicated to St. Quirinus.
This church stands to-day, with its great square tower looming bulkily
over the house-tops, and is reckoned as the prototype of many similar
structures elsewhere. It has the almost perfect disposition and
development of the double apse so frequently met with in German
churches.
In general, its architecture is of a heavy order, and the whole
structure is grim, though by no means gaunt nor cold.
[Illustration: NEUSS]
St. Quirinus is of the epoch when the Romanesque was being replaced
nearly everywhere by the new-coming Gothic.
In spite of this, its style is, curiously enough, neither one nor the
other, nor is it transition, though the pointed arch has crept in and
often eliminated the Romanesque attributes of the round-arch style round
about. It is manifestly not transition, because there was no transition
here from Romanesque to Gothic. It remained palpably Romanesque in spite
of Gothic interpolations.
In the windows one can but remark the indecision which prompted the
builders to fashion them in such extraordinary squat shapes, and they
certainly serve their purpose of lighting the interior very badly.
The nave and aisles of St. Quirinus are ample, and its spacious
_männerchöre_ in the triforium is like all its fellows in the German
churches, an adjunct which adds to the general effect of size.
The church dates from 1209, the period when the Gothic influence was not
only making itself felt over the border, in the domain of France and
Burgundy, but was already extending its influence elsewhere. But here,
westward even of the borders of the Rhine, the round arch lingered on,
to the exclusion of any very marked Gothic tendency.
There is an inscription in stone on the south wall of the church which
places the date of its erection beyond all doubt. It reads thus:
ANNO . INCARNA.
DNI . MC.C.V.I.I.I.I.
PMO . IPERII . AN
NO . OTTONIS . A
DOLFO . COLON
EPO . SOPHIA . A
BBA . MAGISTER
WOLBERO . PO
SUIT . PMU . LAP
IDE . FUNDAME
NTI . HUI . TEM
PLI . I . DIE . SCI . DI
ONISII . MAR.
When a former Count of Clèves founded the primitive church here in the
ninth century, it was a collegiate church attached to the abbey of which
the mother superior was the Abbess Sophia, presumably the same referred
to in the above inscription. The abbey itself was destroyed in 1199
during a civil warfare.
Though not really a massive structure, the church of St. Quirinus is, in
every particular, of a strength and solidity which rank it as a
masterwork of its age. There is nothing weak and attenuated about it,
and its transepts and apses make up in general effect what it lacks in
actual area.
The façade is imposing, though decidedly bizarre when compared with the
simple flowing lines of Gothic; but, on the whole, the effect is one of
a certain grandeur.
The aisles are astonishingly tall when compared with the nave.
There are various meetings of round-arched windows and arcades with
those of a pointed nature, but there is not the slightest evidence of a
development or transition from one to the other, hence the Gothic strain
may be said not to exist.
The general effect of the exterior is polychromatic, which is not
according to the best conceptions of ecclesiastical decorations in
architecture. A twilight or a moonlight view, however, tones it all down
in a manner that makes the fabric appear quite the most imposing church
of its size that one may find in these parts.
The great central tower, reminiscent enough of the parish church in
England, but not so frequent in Germany, and still less so in France,
forms a great lantern which rises over the crossing in a marvellous and
exceedingly practical manner, in that it affords about the only
adequate means of admitting light into the interior.
The triforium of the nave is the chief interior feature to be remarked,
and is most spaciously planned. It forms the _männerchöre_ before
mentioned.
The clerestory windows are decidedly Rhenish in character, resembling,
says one antiquary, who is a humourist if nothing else, an ace of clubs.
At any rate, it is a most unusual and inefficient manner of lighting a
great church. These windows are practically trefoils of most
unsymmetrical proportions, and are in every way unlovely.
The choir is raised on a platform, beneath which is the crypt. Three
flights of steps lead to this platform, which gives it a far more grand
appearance than its actual dimensions would otherwise allow.
The choir-stalls are of the fourteenth century, and are the only
mediæval furnishings to be seen in the church to-day.
The apses contain only moderately effective glass.
The frescoes in the cupola of St. Quirinus, which are the work of
Cornelius of Düsseldorf (about 1811), are most interesting, and are
among the most successful of the great number of modern works of their
kind to be seen in Germany.
_München-Gladbach_
München-Gladbach is one of those "snug" little German towns that one
comes across now and then when wandering along off the beaten track. Its
streets are trim and clean, and its houses likewise, with a brilliancy
of fresh paint which is consistently and proverbially Dutch. Beneath
one's foot is a sea of cobblestones all worn to a smoothness which
argues the tramp of countless hordes of feet over centuries of time, if
paving-stones have really been invented so long. With all its air of
prosperity and providence, München-Gladbach is not a highly interesting
town in which to linger.
Its name is compounded of its prefix, meaning _monk's_, with its
original patronymic, Gladbach. The monks of Gladbach were a part of the
establishment which founded the minster church of Gladbach, an old abbey
or monastic edifice which stands to-day, a great transeptless
thirteenth-century structure with an elevated choir reached from the
nave by two flights of ten or a dozen steps.
The crypt is entered from between these two flights of steps, and forms
all that is left to mark the primitive church.
The round-arched style and Gothic, of a sort, intermingle in the nave in
bewildering fashion until one wonders in what classification it really
belongs. The openings from the aisles to the nave are pointed, while
above is an unpierced triforium with a clerestory of round-headed
arches.
In the aisles are what Jacobean architects called fanlights, a series of
peculiarly shaped openings like an oddly shaped fan. They are distinctly
Rhenish; indeed they are not acknowledged to be found elsewhere, and
hence may be considered as one of the chief points of distinction of
this otherwise not remarkably appealing church.
There are no aisles in the choir, which dates from the thirteenth
century and terminates with a multi-sided apse pierced by long lancet
windows.
The Stadt Kirche of Gladbach, or the parish church as it properly takes
rank, is still a Catholic edifice and shows the advantage of having been
kept in active use. There is nothing musty or moss-grown about it, but
in every way it is as warmly appealing as the monks' church is coldly
unattractive.
There is no marked choir termination, its great aisles extending
completely to the rear with just a suspicion of a rudimentary pentagonal
apse to suggest the easterly end. This is a common enough arrangement in
German churches, which more frequently than not, in the fourteenth
century, the date of this structure, possessed nothing but a squared-off
east end, after the English manner of building.
At the westerly end is a well-planned tower distinctly Rhenish--if it
were not it would be thought heavy--and where the choir is supposed to
join the nave the roof is surmounted by a tiny spire, which, in truth,
is no addition of beauty.
The interior shows great height, and, if of no great architectural
splendour, has enough mural embellishment and attractive glass to stamp
it as a livable and lovable edifice for religious worship, which is a
good deal more than most modern church buildings ever acquire.
The six bays of the nave show pointed arches springing from rounded
columns. There is an arcaded triforium, and an elaborate series of
clerestory windows which show the geometrical and flamboyant Gothic in
its perfection.
The apse is lighted with five windows of great height. The glass is a
mixture of colour and monotone, but the effect is undeniably good.
The chancel is so shallow that the choir flows over, as it were, into
one bay of the nave, while the choir-stalls themselves are placed in the
aisles. Certainly a most unusual, and perhaps a unique, arrangement.
An altar fronts the west end of either range of stalls, and back, at the
easterly end of the aisles, is found another altar.
The high altar has a handsome modern screen in the form of a gilt
triptych, which is singularly effective and imposing.
Beneath the tower, at the westerly end, is the baptistery, entrance to
which from the body of the church is gained through a low, pointed arch.
[Illustration]
XXX
ESSEN AND DORTMUND
_Essen_
Lying just to the eastward of the Rhine are Essen and Dortmund.
The former was once the site of a powerful abbey of Benedictine nuns,
which was dissolved in 1803. The abbess of Essen was always a titled
person, and was a member of the Westphalian circle of the Imperial
Estates, in which capacity she held a governing right over a large tract
of country immediately surrounding the abbey.
There are the spires of five churches hidden away in the forest of
chimneys of the manufactories of Essen which rise skyward from the
Rhineland plain. It is not a very beautiful picture that one sees from
across the railway viaduct, but a remarkable one, and one that has
undeniable elements of the picturesque.
The cathedral at Essen is a conglomerate group of buildings of many
epochs. The church proper consists of a three-aisled nave, with the
usual choir appendage in what must pass for acceptable Gothic.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW _of ESSEN_]