MAGUELONNE
"Aigues Mortes is a dead town!
Maguelonne is the ghost of one."
Maguelonne--the dwelling on the Pool.
The name has an aroma of romance, and a sort of tender melancholy which
penetrates to the imagination before one knows whether it is a city or
a mountain or some gloomy castle in an old fairy tale.
Once it was a splendid city spreading along the shores of the lagoon;
now there remains but a solitary church, one of the characteristic
fortress-churches of the Midi, a bare, primitive-looking building,
closely protected on three sides by a grove of dark trees, in the centre
of a little island formed by the sea and the lagoons which run, like an
enamelled chain, all along these mournful coasts.
One can reach the island by boat across the lagoons from the little
cardboard town of Palavas where the people of Montpellier go in summer
for sea-bathing. In very calm weather it is possible to approach the
isle by sea. The church is a most singular piece of early Christian
architecture, without a window in the white, thick walls; and above, one
sees the curved machicolations, as in a fortress, whence boiling lead
and oil could be poured down on the heads of Saracen assailants, those
terrible enemies of whom the ancient church builders stood in such dread.
Of the original Mother Church of St. Peter there has survived only the
principal nave, "flanked before the destruction of the city with several
towers."
It has "curved machicolations going from one buttress to the next," and
is considered one of the most complete types of the fortified churches
of the Middle Ages, "which are ranged in a line along the coast."
The church of Maguelonne has fine Romanesque windows, and arches of full
half-circle, and resembles a fortress almost more than a church.
The inside is very dark and solemn, stirring in the grave simplicity of
its style. True Provençal Romanesque in its structure of vast arches and
apses; the Roman idea but little modified except in the capitals of the
columns where the classic flow and grace yields to the naïveté of early
Christian sentiment. Indeed, that sentiment very seriously pervades the
whole building. There is none of the sumptuous triumphant spirit of a
grand classic edifice, although the general lines are the same in both
cases. A careful draughtsman, conscientiously rendering the church of
Maguelonne, might produce a portrait correct and unrecognisable, as many
portraits are; the bare lines without the meaning behind them, the matter
without the spirit; and a portrait of that sort might be indistinguishable
from that of some great Roman interior--palace, bath, hall of justice.
The painted hall of the Villa Madama on the hillside above the Milvian
bridge near Rome is constructed on the same broad scheme of arch and
apse, and above, on vault and spandril, garlanded, arabesqued, a riot of
rosy gods and goddesses--the exquisite work of Giulio Romano--voluptuous,
expansive, rich in beauty and power. Maguelonne with its classic
structure--a style which had been developed during centuries for stronger
and stronger expression of Pagan magnificence--nevertheless breathes
forth the sentiment of poverty and asceticism, the spirit that drove
men and women into the wilderness, that set them writhing under the
consciousness of sin, or exalted them to the state of emotion wherein
the pains of martyrdom were transfigured into ecstasy. Truly a thing of
potency the human spirit! How, by the same general means, it can express
emotions at once so strong and so completely opposed is one of the great
mysteries of art.
[Illustration: MAGUELONNE FROM THE LAGOON.
_By E. M. Synge._]
Maguelonne is the last relic of the splendid city of that name which
stood on the opposite shores of the lagoon, its towers mirrored in the
blue water. The island was first the site of a Greek settlement, then
of a Roman town--once attacked by Womba, King of the Visigoths; finally
the Saracens built a city there which Charles Martel destroyed when he
changed for good and all the fortunes of Europe by the great victories
which turned back those marauding people just at the critical moment
when they were on the point of becoming masters of Christendom. For
many years it was the site of a famous monastic establishment which has
earned a reputation for a mild and beneficent and altogether admirable
administration of great wealth and greater power.
Maguelonne is famous for its charming old story of "Pierre de Provence
et la belle Maguelonne," known in most European countries among the
people, and sold at fairs and markets for a few pence. It was written
by a deacon of Maguelonne, Bernard of the Three Ways, about whom one
desires in vain to know more. The story is of lovers parted, wandering;
exchanging rings which are carried off by ravens and finally turn up
miraculously inside a tunny fish caught on the coast, and so lead to
the meeting and reunion of the despairing Pierre and Maguelonne.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF MAGUELONNE.
_By E. M. Synge._]
There are a few small buildings near the church, in one of which live
the woman and her family who look after it. They do not trouble the
visitor with gratuitous information, but hand him the key and leave him
severely alone, unless, indeed, he is adventurous and elects to go on
the roof. Then a boy unlocks the staircase door that gives access to
that windy spot, and amuses himself by sliding down the stone slabs of
the roof while the visitor turns to admire the view of sea, mountains
and lagoons spread forth in a brilliant circle round him. The remarkable
and characteristic roof, however, is what he comes officially to see. It
is formed of thick, overlapping slabs of stone laid at a gentle slope,
and is considered a marvel of architectural skill.
How the problem of weight distribution is solved is, indeed, difficult
to understand. The builders of these early churches perhaps knew some
of the secrets of the Roman architects who at Nimes, in the Temple of
the Nymphs, have erected a seemingly miraculous ceiling composed of
heavy square stones which are guilty of the misdemeanour of existing in
their places "without visible means of support." The feat is accounted
for, though it is scarcely made clear, by the fact that on their upper
surfaces the stones are cut so that they are thicker and heavier on one
side than on the other, and thus the weight is thrown obliquely from
stone to stone across the roof, instead of downwards, a method involving
elaborate mathematical calculations and perfection of workmanship.
The twentieth century has no monopoly of ingenuity after all!
Maguelonne makes a beautiful, sad picture as one leaves it to pass
down to the sea. The blank walls with their arched machicolated
abutments--recalling the fortifications of the Papal Palace--look bare
and acquainted with adversity in the blinding sunshine. On the side of
the lagoons the protecting pines crowd round the building like a sacred
grove; and through their branches the sea-wind makes a low, ominous music.