Avignon than of any other relic of medieval architecture. Thanks to the
researches of Father Ehrle, Prefect of the Vatican Library, and other
scholars, the sums paid to the contractors, their names, the estimates
of quantities, the wages of the chief workmen, and the price of
materials, are before us, and we can trace day by day and month by
month the progress of the great pile. The whole of the craftsmen, with
the exception of the later master painters from Italy and some northern
sculptors, were either Avignonais, Gascons or Provençals.
The first work undertaken by Pierre was the enlargement of the papal
chapel of John XXII. This was doubled in length, and the lavish
decorations executed by John's master painter, Friar Pierre Dupuy, were
continued on the walls of the added portion; payments for white, green,
indigo, vermilion, carmine and other pigments, and for colored tiles,
testify to the brilliancy of its interior.
Meanwhile work was proceeding on the massy new tower, the Turris Magna,
now known as the Tour des Anges, the best preserved of all the old
towers. The foundations were laid on April 3, 1335, and it was roofed
with lead on March 18, 1337. The basement formed the papal wine-cellar;
the ground floor was the treasury, or strong room, where the specie,
the jewels, the precious vessels of gold and silver and other valuables
were stored; many payments are recorded for locks and bars and bolts
for their safe-keeping within the ten-feet-thick walls of the tower.
The next great work put in hand was the east wing, which was raised on
a space left by John's demolished, or partially demolished, structure.
On November 20, 1337, two masons (lapiscidarios), Pierre Folcaud and
Jean Chapelier, and a carpenter, Jacques Beyran, all of Avignon,
contracted to carry out the plans of a new architect, Bernard Canello,
for the completion of Benedict's private apartments, and on the same
day Lambert Fabre and Martin Guinaud, housewreckers, were paid
eighty-three gold florins on account, for the demolition of the old
buildings. This wing, since wholly remodeled by the legates and the
modern corps of engineers, comprised the papal Garde Robe, the Garde
Meuble, the private kitchen and offices and, on the floor above, the
papal dining-room, study and private oratory. The walls were, of
course, embattlemented, and in 1337 the most exposed portions of the
new buildings were defended by a stout rampart....
The whole ground floor, 110 feet by 33, was occupied by a great
reception hall (Camera Paramenti), where distinguished visitors were
accorded a first welcome before being admitted to a private audience,
or accorded a solemn state reception in consistory, as the import of
their embassy demanded. The popes were also used to receive the
cardinals there, and two doorkeepers were appointed who must be
faithful, virtuous and honest men and sleep in the hall; their office
being one of great trust, was highly paid, and they were generally
laymen. It was probably in this hall that St. Catherine was received by
Clement VI. The Avignon conclaves were held there, for on December 31,
1352, four hundred and fifteen days' and nights' labor were employed in
breaking down the walls between the dining-hall and the Camera
Paramenti, clearing away the stones and making secret chambers for the
lord cardinals, in which chambers were twenty-eight cells....
On September 5, 1339, John's old belfry was pulled down and Jean Mauser
de Carnot, who asserted he had excavated 11,300 basketfuls of rubbish,
was paid at the rate of twelve deniers the hundred for the work.
Evidently these were good times for the basket makers as well as
builders. December 22, 1340, three contractors, Isnard and Raymond
Durand and Jacques Gasquet, received 1,273 florins for the completed
new tower, with its barbicans, battlements and machicoulis, which was
on the site and which retained the appellation of the Tour de la
Campane, or Bell Tower. The embattlemented and machicolated summit, but
not the chastelet, of this mighty tower has recently been restored; its
walls are nearly twelve feet thick....
Benedict's last undertaking was the erection of the Tour de Trouillas,
next the Tour des Latrines, and on April 20, 1341, sixteen rubbish
baskets were bought for the "Saracens that excavated the foundations of
the turris nova." The Tour de Trouillas, tallest and stoutest of the
keeps of the mighty fortress, is 175 feet high as compared with the 150
feet of the Tour de la Campane, and its walls fifteen feet thick as
compared with twelve feet. It should be noted, however, that the latter
tower appears the taller owing to the elevated ground whereon, it
stands....
Having bought, by private agreement or by arbitration, all the houses
adjacent to the palace on the south side, Clement next proceeded to
demolish them and on the site to raise the noblest and most beautiful
wing of the great palace. This edifice, known to contemporaries as the
great new palace, comprised a spacious Chapel and Hall of Justice; and
in August 9, 1344, contracts were made for cutting away and leveling
the rock above the present Rue Peyrolerie, whereon, by October 21,
1351, the masons had raised their beautiful building.
On that day, by order of our lord the pope, one hundred florins were
handed over by the papal chamber to Master John of Loubières to
distribute among the masters to celebrate the placing of the keystone
in the vaulting of the new chapel of the palace and the completion of
the said chapel. On All Saints' Day of that same year Clement recited
(a month before his death) the first solemn mass in his great new
chapel and preached a most eloquent sermon, praising God for the
completion of his life's work. The lower hall, most famous of judicial
chambers in Christendom and final Court of Appeal in all questions of
international and ecclesiastical law, was later in opening.
Among the amenities of the old palace were the spacious and lovely
gardens on the east, with their clipt hedges, avenues of trees,
flower-beds and covered and frescoed walls, all kept fresh and green by
channels of water. John maintained a menagerie of lions and other wild
and strange beasts; stately peacocks swept proudly along the green
swards, for the inventory of 1369 specifies seventeen peacocks, some
old and some young, whereof six were white.
* * * * *
But we have as yet dealt chiefly with the external shell of this mass
of architecture which, tall and mighty, raises its once impregnable
walls and towers against the sky. The beauty of its interior remains
briefly to be touched upon, for the fortress palace had, as Clement
left it, some analogy with the great Moorish palace of the Alhambra in
that it stood outwardly grim and strong, while within it was a shrine
of exquisite and luxurious art.
The austere Benedict, who, his biographer tells us, left the walls of
the consistory naked, appears to have expended little on the pictorial
decorations of the halls and chambers erected during his pontificate;
but with the elevation of the luxurious and art-loving Clement VI., a
new spirit breathes over the fabric. The stern simplicity and noble
strength of his predecessor's work assume an internal vesture of
richness and beauty; the walls glow with azure and gold; a legion of
Gallic sculptors and Italian painters lavish their art on the
embellishment of the palace....
Such, in brief outline, was the progress of the mighty fabric and its
internal decoration which the great popes of Avignon raised to be their
dwelling-place, their fortress, and the ecclesiastical center of
Christendom. Tho shorn of all its pristine beauty and robbed of much of
its symmetry, it stands to-day in bulk and majesty, much as it stood at
the end of Clement VI.'s reign, when a contemporary writer describes it
as a quadrangular edifice, enclosed within high walls and towers and
constructed in most noble style, and tho it was all most beautiful to
look upon, there were three parts of transcendent beauty: the
Audientia, the Capella major, and the terraces: and these were so
admirably planned and contrived that peradventure no palace comparable
to it was to be found in the whole world. The terraces referred to were
those raised over the great chapel, and were formed of stone, bedded in
asphalt and laid on a staging of stout oak joists; the view from the
terraces was unparalleled for range and beauty.
The glowing splendor of frescoed walls was enhanced by gorgeous
hangings and tapestries and by the magnificent robes and jewels of
popes and cardinals. Crowds of goldsmiths--forty were employed at the
papal court--embroiderers and silk mercers, made Avignon famous
thoughout Europe. In 1337, 318 florins were paid for eight Paris
carpets; in 1343 Clement VI. paid 213 florins for green silk hangings,
and 254 florins for carpets adorned with roses; in 1348, 400 gold and
silver vessels turned the scales at 862 marks, 5 ounces; in the
inventory of 1369, despite the fact that the most precious had been
sent to Rome, the gold vessels were weighed out at 1,434 marks, 1
ounce; the silver at 5,525 marks 7 ounces.
A cardinal's hat cost from 15 to 40 florins, and in 1348, 150 florins
were paid for one piece of scarlet for the pope, and 75 to 100 florins
for the garniture of a riding cloak. Clement VI. spent 1,278 florins in
the purchase of cloth of gold, woven by the Saracens of Damascus; one
payment to Jacopo Malabayla of Arti for summer and winter clothing for
the papal household amounted to 6,510 florins, and the same obviously
Hebrew merchant received 10,652 florins in 1341 for cloth and ermine
and beaver; in 1347 Clement's furrier received 1,080 ermine skins,
whereof 430 were used in one cloak, 310 for a mantle, 150 for two
hoods, and 88 for nine birettas; in 1351, 2,258 florins went to Tuscany
for silk, and 385 for brocade to Venice.
The richness of the papal utensils beggars description; jeweled cups,
flagons of gold, knife handles of jasper and ivory, forks of
mother-of-pearl and gold. A goldsmith in 1382 was paid 14 florins for
repairing two of the last-named implements. The flabelli, or
processional feather fans, cost 14 florins; Benedict XIII., paid 300
florins for an enameled silver bit; the Golden Roses cost from 100 to
300 florins. Presents of jewels were costly and frequent. Gregory XI.
gave 168 pearls, value 179 francs, to the citizens of Avellino; Clement
VII. presented the Duke of Burgundy with a ring of gold, worth 335
florins; an aguière of gold and pearls, valued at 1,000 florins, and
two tables each over 200 florins. Richer gifts were lavished on
sovereign princes. Reliquaries were of prodigious value; the gold cross
containing a piece of the true cross at the Célestins weighed fifteen
pounds. In 1375 a silver arm for the image of St. Andrew cost over
2,566 florins.
The cardinals were equally munificent. The most striking example of
lavish splendor is afforded by the State banquet given to Clement V.,
by the Cardinals Arnaud de Palegrue and Pierre Taillefer in May, 1308.
Clement, as he descended from his litter, was received by his hosts and
twenty chaplains, who conducted him to a chamber hung with richest
tapestries from floor to ceiling; he trod on velvet carpet of triple
pile; his state-bed was draped with fine crimson velvet, lined with
white ermine; the sheets of silk were embroidered with silver and gold.
The table was served by four papal knights and twelve squires, who each
received silver girdles and purses filled with gold from the hosts.
Fifty cardinals' squires assisted them in serving the banquet, which
consisted of nine courses of three plates each--twenty-seven dishes in
all. The meats were built up in fantastic form: castles, gigantic
stags, boars, horses, etc. After the fourth service, the cardinal
offered his holiness a milk-white steed worth 400 florins; two gold
rings, jeweled with an enormous sapphire and a no less enormous topaz;
and a bowl, worth 100 florins; sixteen cardinal guests and twenty
prelates were given rings and jewels, and twelve young clerks of the
papal house and twenty-four sergeants-at-arms received purses filled
with florins.
After the fifth service, a great tower with a font whence gushed forth
five sorts of choicest wines was carried in; and a tourney was run
during the interval between the seventh and eighth courses. Then
followed a concert of sweetest music, and dessert was furnished by two
trees--one of silver, bearing rarest fruits of all kinds, and the other
loaded with sugared fruits of many colors. Various wines were then
served, whereupon the master cooks, with thirty assistants, executed
dances before the guests. Clement, by this time, having had enough,
retired to his chamber, where, lest he might faint for lack of
refreshment during the night, wine and spices were brought to him; the
entertainment ended with dances and distractions of many kinds.
There is no reason to believe that the Avignon popes, either in their
household expenditure or in their personal luxury, were more
extravagant than their Roman predecessors or successors. Yet amid all
this luxury, strange defects of comfort appear to the modern sense.
Windows, as we have seen, were generally covered with wax cloth or
linen, carpets were rare, and rushes were strewn on the floors of most
of the rooms. From May to November, 1349, more than 300 loads of rushes
were supplied for use in the dining-rooms and chambers of the apostolic
palace. Subsequently mats were introduced, and in 1352 Pierre de
Glotos, mat-maker to the palace of our lord and pope, was paid for 275
cannae of matting for the palace of Avignon and for the palace beyond
the Rhone and the new chapel.
The Walls of Avignon
By Thomas Oakey
[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]
Intimately associated with the history of the palace of the Popes of
Avignon is that of the unparalleled circuit of walls and towers which
defended the city from the scourge of organized robber bands during the
fourteenth century. The earliest quadrilateral fortifications embraced
a relatively small area consisting of the Rocher des Doms and the
parishes of St. Agricol, St. Didier, and St. Pierre; these walls,
demolished and rebuilt on a more extensive scale in the twelfth
century, embraced an area easily traceable on the modern map, from the
Porte du Rhone, round the Rues du Limas, Joseph Vernet, des Lices,
Philonarde, Campane, Trois Colombes, to the Rocher.
It was these fortifications that the Cardinal St. Angelo forced the
citizens to raze in 1227. Until the acquisition of Avignon by Clement
VI., the city was an open one and only defended by a double fosse. The
origin of the papal walls has already been traced, and their subsequent
fate may now be briefly given. The assaults of the Rhone proved more
destructive than human artillery. The walls and towers having been
hastily raised, towers fell by reason of bad foundation, and the upkeep
of the fortifications was a continual drain on papal and communal
finances.
In 1362 an irresistible flood of waters overthrew the Fortes St. Michel
and Limbert, and large breaches were often made by these recurring
inundations. Moreover, the expansion of the city of old and the need of
access to the suburbs involved frequent displacement and opening of new
gates. In 1482 the whole system of the defensive works was modified to
meet the new situation caused by the introduction of gunpowder. The
gates most exposed to attack were further defended by outworks, that of
St. Lazare having been fortified during the rule of Giuliano della
Rovere by the addition of a powerful bastide, with three round towers,
a drawbridge, a new fosse which communicated with the great fosse
before the main walls. Other modifications took place during the
Huguenot wars.
Notwithstanding many repairs during the intervening centuries, the
fortifications had, under the second Empire, suffered sad degradation,
and at length Viollet-le-Duc was entrusted with their restoration. The
famous architect set to work on their southern side and had completed
about one-third of the restoration when the disastrous issue of the
Franco-Prussian war arrested all further progress until the Third
Republic feebly resumed the task. The walls along the Rhone, especially
useful in time of flood, were backed with stone, their battlements and
machicoulis renewed. The visitor, however, will need no reminder that
the present passive aspect of the ramparts conveys but a faint
impression of their former state, when a broad and deep fosse, seven
feet by twelve, washed their bases, above which they raised their once
impregnable curtains full thirty feet.
Two of the old gates have been demolished--the Porte de Limbert in
1896, and the Porte de l'Oulle in 1900--the former, many times
repaired, was the only existing example of the external aspect of a
medieval gate, the latter had been rebuilt in 1786 in the Doric style.
A new gate, the Porte Pétrarque, now the Porte de la République, was
erected by Viollet-le-Duc when the walls were pierced for the new
street; the Porte St. Dominique is also new. These noble mural
defenses, three miles in circuit, twice narrowly escaped demolition--at
the construction of the railway, when they were saved by a vigorous
protest of Prosper Mérimée, and in 1902, when, on the pretext that they
blocked the development of the city, the municipality decided to
demolish the unrestored portions. Luckily the intervention of a
public-spirited Prefect of Vaucluse proved successful, and they were
again rescued from the housewrecker's pick. No visitor to Avignon
should omit to walk or drive round the famous ramparts.
Their stones have been subjected to careful scrutiny by antiquarians
and the masons' marks (tacherons)--about 4,500--carefully examined and
reduced to about four hundred and fifty types. Opinions differ as to
the meaning of these curious signs, but there is little doubt that M.
Maire's suggestion is the correct one--the workmen were paid by the
piece, and each had his own private mark which he cut on the stones he
laid and thus enabled the foreman to check his work.
We begin at the Porte du Rhône, and skirt the older part of the walls
on the northwest with their different style of corbels and machicoulis.
M. Maire has no hesitation in assigning this portion to the time of
Clement VI., by reason of the coarser nature of the masons' marks.
Turning southwards, we pass the Porte St. Dominique, and reach the
Porte St. Roch (formerly the Porte du Chamfleury, and only opened at
plague times) and the Porte de la République. We soon note the
unrestored portions, the site of the old Porte Limbert, and turn
northward to the Porte St. Lazare.
Before we reach this gate we may fitly make a digression, and in pious
memory of a great Englishman, fare along the Avenue du Cimetière to the
grave of John Stuart Mill, who with his wife lies buried within the
cemetery under an elder-tree on the right and toward the end of Avenue
2. A plain stone slab bears the well-known inscription to Mrs. Mill's
memory--the noblest and most eloquent epitaph ever composed by man for
woman. It is pleasant to remember that Mill has left golden opinions of
his gentleness and generosity behind him at Avignon. His house, a
charming little hermitage approached by an avenue of plane trees not
far from the cemetery, was sold in 1905, and a few relics were bought
and still are cherished by the rare friends the somewhat self-centered
philosopher made in the city. The present owner has preserved the
library and study, where the "Essay on Liberty" was written, much as it
was in Mill's days.
To the peasants who met the tall, bent, spare figure, musing and
botanizing along the country lanes and fields, he was known as
"Monsieur Émile." Before he left the city on his periodical visits to
England, Mill was wont to leave 300 francs with M. Rey, pastor of the
Protestant Church in Avignon: two hundred for expenses of public
worship; one hundred for the poor, always charging M. Rey to write to
England if any further need arose.
Mill, a great Englishman of European fame, to the amazement of his
French friends, was followed to his last resting-place by no more than
five mourners. As we write news comes that the civic authorities have
decided to recall to posterity the association of the great thinker
with Avignon by giving the name of Stuart Mill to a new boulevard, and
that a bust has been unveiled to his memory near the pleasant city he
loved so well. Mill was much gratified that his pamphlet on "The
Subjection of Women" converted Mistral to the movement for their
enfranchisement, and their legal equality with men.
Villeneuve and the Broken Bridge
By Thomas Oakey
[Footnote: From "The Story of Avignon." Published by E.P. Dutton & Co.]
The royal city of Villeneuve, altho geographically and politically
sundered from Avignon and the County Venaissin, was socially and
economically bound up with the papal city. The same reason that to-day
impels the rich citizens of Avignon to dot the hills of Languedoc with
their summer villas was operative in papal times, and popes and
cardinals and prelates loved to build their summer places on the
opposite bank of the Rhone.
How silent and neglected are the streets of this once wealthy and
important city! How degraded its monuments, how faded its glory! In the
hot, dusty afternoon, as the cranky old omnibus rattles along the
narrow High Street, it appears to awaken echoes in a city of the dead.
Making our way northward, we pass the restored seventeenth-century
portal of the palace of the sainted Cardinal of Luxembourg; the
weather-worn, neglected, late Renaissance portal of the so-called Hôtel
de Conti; the ruined Gothic portal of the palace of Cardinal Pierre de
Thury, through which we pass to the old court-yard and a chapel
subsequently restored and now used as the chapel of the Grey Penitents.
We pass many another relic of departed grandeur, and beyond the Place
Neuve on our right come upon a great portal which opens on a vaulted
passage leading to one of the most bewildering and extraordinary
congeries of ruined monastic buildings in France, now inhabited by a
population of poor folk--two hundred families, it is said--who, since
the Revolution, have settled in the vast buildings of the once famous
and opulent Charterhouse of Villeneuve. Founded by Innocent VI., three
years after his elevation to the papal chair, and enriched by
subsequent endownments, the Charterhouse of the Val de Bénédiction, the
second in importance of the Order, grew in wealth and importance during
the centuries until it was sacked and sold in small lots during the
Revolution to the ancestors of the present occupants.
The circuit of its walls was a mile in extent; its artistic treasures
were prodigious. The Coronation of the Virgin came thence; the Pietá of
Villeneuve, now in the Louvre; the founder's tomb; the high altar of
Notre Dame at Villeneuve, and a few other relics, alone survive of its
vast possessions. The scene resembles nothing so much as a city ruined
by bombardment or earthquake, but how long the wreck will remain in its
present picturesque and melancholy condition is difficult to forecast.
The state is slowly buying out the owners, and doubtless ere many years
are passed the more valuable artistic remains will have been swept and
garnished and restored.
As we return from the Chartreuse we turn left along the Place Neuve,
and climb to the mighty fort of St. André, which occupies the most
venerable site in the royal new city, for on the hill where it stands
tradition relates that St. Cesarie, Bishop of Arles, was buried, and
that there, in the sixth century, the first Benedictines settled. The
primitive settlement, destroyed in the ninth century, was extensively
rebuilt in 980, and within its walls, churches were dedicated to St.
Andrew, St. Michael, and St. Martin. In the twelfth century the rich
and powerful monastery, a strongly fortified, self-sufficing community,
was held under the counts of Toulouse, and from their overlordship it
was subsequently admitted by the counts to be within the territory of
the republic of Avignon, whose consuls in 1210 compelled the abbot to
demolish his walls and promise never to rebuild them.