Cathedral Cities of France Part 1

Cathedral Cities of France.

by Herbert Marshall and Hester Marshall.

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. Phene 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 archeologique de Paris"; M. Hoffbauer's "Paris a travers les ages"; M. Enlart's "Architecture Religieuse"; 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.

Chapter One

A FRENCH CATHEDRAL CITY

There are in France to-day three distinct cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing 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 Laon 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 cla.s.s it is more difficult to find examples in France, although in England the north country is thick with such mushroom cities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. MARTIN, LaON]

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 t.i.tle.

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 Caesars was probably much more imposing, though perhaps less picturesque, than that which they presented in mediaeval 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 cla.s.s 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 mediaeval 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 _eveches_ 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 hotels 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 n.o.bles 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ma.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances, but enough remains to make of the general history of the French city a fascinating though almost inexhaustible study, only surpa.s.sed by the study of each town in its separate case.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A STREET IN PeRIGUEUX]

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 _cafes_, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 Beuriere, 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 a.s.sociated 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 manuvres.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Gesoriac.u.m, though not on very reliable authority. From its position on the high gra.s.sy cliffs of Picardy, guarding the little river Liane and looking out over the waves to the white line of the English sh.o.r.e, Boulogne in other days had an importance quite distinct from that which we now a.s.sign 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 a.s.serting 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 va.s.sal, 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 Armee," a memorial of the first Napoleon's encampment at Boulogne in 1804, and of his magnificent preparations for the invasion of England. In the Chateau, 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 "const.i.tutional 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 Chateau, 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 _reunion_ of ancient a.s.sociations 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 pa.s.ses 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 cla.s.sic 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, G.o.dfrey de Bouillon, destined to become king of Jerusalem; dark, pa.s.sionate 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 Francois d'Angouleme, 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'Angouleme, his son-in-law, ascended his throne as Francois 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 Francois, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 facade.

The approach to Amiens offers no _coup d'il_ of cl.u.s.tering towers or spires such as an English or Norman cathedral city usually gives us, and the Cathedral itself is hidden as we pa.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 b.u.t.tresses, 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 _fleche_, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage, screened by an arcade, which runs between the pier arches and clerestory windows, and is considered to refer to the three openings, or s.p.a.ces, _trinae 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 pa.s.sage 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'Archeologie Francaise,"

derives the word from a French adjective "trifore," or "trifoire,"

through the Latin "transforatus," a pa.s.sage pierced through the thickness of the wall; and this idea of a pa.s.sage-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 pa.s.sages round the church under the word "triforia."

"Ibi triforium unum, hic duo in choro, et in ala ecclesiae tercium."