Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France Part 8

Languedoc.

I.

CATHEDRALS OF THE CITIES.

[Sidenote: Nimes.]

Entering Languedoc from the valley of the Rhone, the Cathedral-lover is doomed to disappointment in the city of Nimes. All that intense, intra-mural life of the Middle Ages seems to have pa.s.sed this city by, and its traces, which he is so eager to find, prove to be neither notable nor beautiful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AN AMPHITHEATRE WHICH RIVALS THE ART OF THE COLISEUM."--NiMES.]

The great past of Nimes is of a more remote antiquity than the Cathedral Building Ages. A small but exquisite Temple, a Nymphaeum, Baths, parts of a fine Portal, Roman walls, and an Amphitheatre which rivals the art of the Coliseum,--these are the ruins of Nimean greatness. She was essentially a city of the Romans, and that, even to-day, she has not lost the memory of her glorious antiquity was well ill.u.s.trated in 1874, when the Nimois, with much pomp and civic pride, unveiled a statue to "their fellow-countryman," the Emperor Antoninus Pius. These are the memories in which Nimes delights. Yet her history of later times, if not glorious, is full of strange and curious interest. Like all the ancient cities of the South, she fell into the hands of many a wild and alien foe, and at length in 737, Charles Martel arrived at her gates. Grossly ignorant of art, no thing of beauty that stood in his path escaped fire and axe; and smoke-marks along the arena walls show to-day how narrowly they escaped the irreparable destruction which had wiped out the Forum, the Capitol, the Temple, the Baths, and all the magnificence of Roman Narbonne. To both the early and the later Middle Ages, Roman remains had scarcely more meaning than they had for the Franks. The delicate Temple of Trajan's wife, scorned for its pagan a.s.sociations, was used as a stable, a store-house, and, purified by proper ceremonials, it even became a Christian church. The Amphitheatre has had a still stranger destiny. To a mediaeval Viscount, it was naturally inconceivable as a place of amus.e.m.e.nt, and as naturally, he saw in its walls a stronghold where he could live as securely as ever lord in castle. As a fortress which successfully defied Charles Martel, it was a place of no mean strength, and in 1100 it had become "a veritable hornets' nest, buzzing with warriors."

A few years before, Pope Urban II had landed at Maguelonne and ridden to Clermont to preach the First Crusade. On his return he stopped at Nimes and held a Council for the same holy purpose. Raymond de Saint-Gilles, Count of Toulouse and overlord of Nimes, travelled there to meet the Sovereign Pontiff, and amid the wonderful ferment of enthusiasm which the "Holy War" had aroused, the South was pledged anew to this romantic and war-like phase of the cause of Christ. Trencavel, Viscount of Nimes, loyal to G.o.d and his Suzerain, followed Raymond to Palestine. Its natural protectors gone, the city formed a defensive a.s.sociation called the "Chevaliers of the Arena." As its name implies, this curious fraternity was composed of the soldiers of the ancient amphitheatre.

Like many others of the time it was semi-military, semi-religious, its members bound by many solemn oaths and ceremonies, and thus, by the eccentricity of fate, this old pagan playground became a fortress consecrated to Christian defence, the scene of many a solemn Ma.s.s.

The divisions in the Christian faith, which followed so closely the fervours of the Crusades, were most disastrous to Nimes. From the XIII until the XVII centuries, wars of religion were interrupted by suspicious and unheeded truces, and these in turn were broken by fresh outbursts of embittered contest. An ally of the new "Crusaders" in Simon de Montfort's day, Nimes became largely Protestant in the XVI century; and in 1567, as if to avenge the injuries their ancestors had formerly inflicted on the Albigenses, the Nimois sacked their Bishop's Palace and threw all the Catholics they could find down the wells of the town. This celebration of Saint Michael's Day was repaid at the Ma.s.sacre of Saint Bartholomew. The wise Edict of Nantes brought a truce to these hostilities,--its revocation, new persecutions and flights. A hundred years later the Huguenots were again in force, and, aided by the unrest of the Revolution, successfully ma.s.sacred the Catholics of the city; and during the "White Terror" of 1815 the Catholics arose and avenged themselves with equal vigour. When it is remembered that this savage and vindictive spirit has characterised the Nimois of the last six hundred years, it is scarcely surprising that they should prefer to dwell on the remote antiquity of their city rather than on the unedifying episodes of her Christian history.

Between the glories of her paganism and the disputes of Christians, the Faith has struggled and survived; but in the Cathedral-building era, religious enthusiasm was so often expended in mutual fury and reprisals that neither time nor thought was left for that common and gentle expression of mediaeval fervour, ecclesiastical architecture. And the Church of Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Castor, which would seem to have suffered from the neglect and ignorance of both patrons and builders, is one of the least interesting Cathedrals in Languedoc.

A graceful gallery of the nave, which also surrounds the choir, is the notable part of the interior, and the insignificance of the exterior is relieved only by a frieze of the XI and XII centuries. On this frieze is sculptured, in much interesting detail, the Biblical stories of the early years of mankind; but it is unfortunately placed so high on the front wall that it seems badly proportioned to the facade, and as a carved detail it is almost indistinguishable. As has been finely said the whole church is "gaunt" and unbeautiful; it is a depressing mixture of styles, Roman, Romano-Byzantine, and Gothic; and in studying its one fine detail, a photograph or a drawing is much more satisfactory than an hour's tantalising effort to see the original.

[Sidenote: Montpellier.]

Montpellier is "an agreeable city, clean, well-built, intersected by open squares with wide-spread horizons, and fine, broad boulevards, a city whose distinctive characteristics would appear to be wealth, and a taste for art, leisure, and study." The "taste" and the "art" are princ.i.p.ally those of the pseudo-cla.s.sic style, an imitation of "ancient Greece and imperial Rome," which the French of the XVIII century carried to such unpleasant excess. The general characteristics of the imitation, size and bombast, are well epitomised in the princ.i.p.al statue of Montpellier's fine Champ de Mars, which represents the high-heeled and luxurious Louis XIV in the unfitting armour of a Roman Imperator, mounted on a huge and restive charger. Such affectation in architectural subjects is the death-blow to all real beauty and originality, and Montpellier has gained little from its Bourbon patrons except a series of fine broad vistas. No city could offer greater contrast to the ancient and dignified cla.s.sicism of Nimes.

If the mediaeval origin of Montpellier were not well known, one would believe it the creation of the Renaissance, and the few narrow, tortuous streets of the older days recall little of its intense past, when the city grew as never before nor since, when scholars of the genius of Petrarch and the wit of Rabelais sought her out, when she belonged to Aragon or Navarre and not to the King of France. This is the interesting Montpellier.

In the XIII century, she had a University which the Pope formally sanctioned, and a school of medicine founded by Arabian physicians which rivalled that of Paris. More significant still to Languedoc, her prosperity had begun to overshadow that of the neighbouring Bishopric of Maguelonne, and a bitter rivalry sprang up between the two cities. From the first Maguelonne was doomed. She had no schools that could rival those of Montpellier; she ceased to grow as the younger city increased in fame and size, till even history pa.s.sed her by, and the stirring events of the times took place in the streets of her larger and more prosperous neighbour. Finally she was deserted by her Bishops, and no longer upheld by their episcopal dignity, her fall was so overwhelming that to-day her mediaeval walls have crumbled to the last stone and only a lonely old Cathedral remains to mark her greatness. In 1536 my Lord Bishop, with much appropriate pomp and ceremony, rode out of her gates and entered those of Montpellier as t.i.tular Bishop for the first time.

He did not find the townsmen so elated by the new dignity of the city as to have broken ground for a new Cathedral, nor did he himself seem ambitious, as his predecessors of Maguelonne had been, to build a church worthy of his rank. However, as a Bishop must have a Cathedral-church, the chapel of the Benedictine monastery was chosen for this honour and solemnly consecrated the Cathedral of Saint-Pierre of Montpellier. This chapel had been built in the XIV century, and at the time of these episcopal changes, only the nave was finished. It was, however, Gothic; and as this style had become much favoured by the South at this late period, the Bishop must have believed that he had the beginning of a very fine and admirable Cathedral. In the religious wars which followed 1536, succeeding prelates found much to distract them from any further building; the Cathedral itself was so injured that such attention as could be spared from heretics to mere architectural details was devoted to necessary restorations and reconstructions, and the finished Saint-Pierre of to-day is an edifice of surprising modernity.

In the interior, the nave and aisles are partially of old construction, but the beautiful choir is the XIX century building of Revoil. Of the exterior, the entire apse is his also, and as the portal of the south wall was built in 1884 and the northern side of the Cathedral is incorporated in that of the Bishop's Palace, only the tower and the facade are mediaeval.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ITS GENERAL EFFECT IS SOMEWHAT THAT OF A PORTE-COCHeRE."--MONTPELLIER.]

None of the towers have much architectural significance, either of beauty or originality. In comparison with the decoration of the facade they make but little impression. This decoration has more original incongruity than any detail ever applied to facade, Gothic or Romanesque, and is an extreme example of the license which southern builders allowed themselves in their adaptation of the northern style.

It is a vagary, and has appealed to some Anglo-Saxon travellers, but French authorities, almost without dissent, allude to it apologetically as "unpardonable." Its general effect is somewhat that of a porte-cochere, whose roofing, directly attached to the front wall, is gothically pointed, and supported by two immense pillars. The pillars end in cones that resemble nothing in the world so much as sugar-loaves, and the whole structure is marvellously unique. Yet strange to say, the effect of the facade, with the smoothness and roundness of its pillars and the uncompromising squareness of its towers, while altogether bad, is not altogether unpleasing. Standing before it the traveller was both bewildered and fascinated as he saw that even in the extravagance of their combinations, the builders, with true southern finesse, had avoided both the grotesque and the monstrous.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE FINEST VIEW IS THAT OF THE APSE."--MONTPELLIER.]

As a whole, Saint-Pierre is a fine Cathedral; through many stages of building, enlarging, and re-constructing, its style has remained consonant; but the general impression is not altogether harmonious. The perspective of the western front, which should be imposing, is destroyed by a hill which slopes sharply up before the very portal. The facade is attached to the immense, unbroken wall of the old episcopal Palace, and the majesty, which is a Cathedral's by very virtue of its height alone, is entirely destroyed by a seemingly interminable breadth of wall.

Reversing the natural order of things, the finest view is that of the apse. And this modern part is, in reality, the chief architectural glory of this comparatively new Cathedral and its comparatively modern town.

[Sidenote: Beziers.]

"You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned Cathedral-city and you will see in a moment the mediaeval relations between Church and State. The Cathedral is the city. The first object you catch sight of as you approach is the spire tapering into the sky, or the huge towers holding possession of the centre of the landscape--majestically beautiful--imposing by mere size. As you go nearer, the pinnacles are glittering in the tints of the sunset, when down below among the streets and lanes twilight is darkening. And even now, when the towns are thrice their ancient size, ... the Cathedral is still the governing force in the picture, the one object which possesses the imagination, and refuses to be eclipsed." These words are the description of Beziers as it is best and most impressively seen. From the distance, the Cathedral and its ramparts rise in imposing ma.s.s, a fine example of the strength, pride, and supremacy of the Church.

As we approach, the Cathedral grows much less imposing, and its facade gives the impression of an unpleasant conglomeration of styles. It is not a fortress church, yet it was evidently built for defence; it is Gothic, yet the lightness and grace of that art are sacrificed to the ma.s.siveness and resistive strength, imperatively required by southern Cathedrals in times of wars and bellicose heretics. The whole building seems a compromise between necessity and art.

It is, however, a notable example of the Gothic of the South, and of the modifications which that style invariably underwent, through the artistic caprice of its builders, or the political fore-sight of their patrons, the Bishops.

The facade of Saint-Nazaire of Beziers has a Gothic portal of good but not notable proportions, and a large and beautiful rose-window. As if to protect these weaker and decorative attempts, the builder flanked them with two square towers, whose crenellated tops and solid, heavy walls could serve as strongholds. Perhaps to reconcile the irreconcilable, crenellations joining the towers were placed over the rose-window, and at either end of the portal, a few inches of Gothic carving were cut in the tower-wall. The result is frank incongruity. And the traveller left without regret, to look at the apse. It cannot be denied that the clock-tower which comes into view is very square and thick; but in spite of that it has a simple dignity, and as the apse itself is not florid, this proved to be the really pleasing detailed view of the Cathedral.

The open square behind the church is tiny, and there one can best see the curious grilled iron-work, which in the times of mediaeval outbreaks protected the fine windows of the choir and preserved them for future generations of worshippers and admirers. It was after noon when the traveller finished his investigations of Saint-Nazaire; and as the southern churches close between twelve and two, he took dejeuner at a little cafe near-by and patiently waited for the hour of re-opening. Had there been nothing but the interior to explore, he could not have spent two hours in such contented waiting. But there was a Cloister,--and on the stroke of two he and the sacristan met before the portal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE CLOCK-TOWER IS VERY SQUARE AND THICK."--BeZIERS.]

In describing their "monuments," French guide-books confine themselves to facts, and the adjectives "fine" and "remarkable"; they are almost always strictly impersonal, and the traveller who uses them as a cicerone, has a sense of unexpected discovery, a peculiar elation, in finding a monument of rare beauty; but he is never subjected to that disappointed irritation which comes when one stands before the "monument" and feels that one's expectations have been unduly stimulated. The Cloister of Beziers is a "fine monument," but as he walked about it, the traveller felt no sense of elation. He found a small Cloister, Gothic like the Cathedral, with cl.u.s.tered columns and little ornamentation. It was not very completely restored, and had a sad, melancholy charm, like a solitary sprig of lavender in an old press, or a rose-leaf between the pages of a worn and forgotten Missal.

In the Cloister-close, stands a Gothic fountain; but the days when its waters dropped and tinkled in the stillness, when their sound mingled with the murmured prayers and slow steps of the priests,--those days are long forgotten. The quaint and pretty fountain is now dry and dust-covered; while about it trees and plants and weeds grow as they may, and bits of the Cloister columns have fallen off, and niches are without their guarding Saints.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE QUAINT AND PRETTY FOUNTAIN."--BeZIERS.]

By contrast, the Cathedral itself seems full of life. Its interior is an aisle-less Gothic room, whose fine height and emptiness of column or detail give it an appearance of vast and well-conceived proportions.

Except the really beautiful windows of the choir, which are a study in themselves, there is very little in this interior to hold the mind; one is lost in a pleasant sense of general symmetry. As the traveller was sitting in the nave, a few priests filed into the choir, and began, in quavering voices, to intone their prayers, and in the peacefulness of the church, in the trembling monotony of the weak, old voices, his thoughts wandered to the stirring history which had been lived about the Cathedral, and within its very walls. For Beziers was and had always been a hot-bed of heretics. Here in the IV century, long before the building of the Cathedral, the Emperor Constantius II forced the unwilling Catholic Bishops of Gaul to join their heretical Aryan brethren in Council; here the equally heretical Visigoths gave new strength to the dissenters; and here, again, after centuries of orthodoxy which Clovis had imposed, a new centre of religious storm was formed. It was about this period, the XII and XIV centuries, that the Cathedral was built; and it is perhaps because of the strength of those French protestants against the Church of Rome, the Albigenses, that its essentially Gothic style was so confused by military additions. At the beginning of the troublous times of which these towers are reminders, Raymond-Roger of Trencavel, the gallant and romantic Lord of Carca.s.sonne, was also Viscount of Beziers; and contrary to the fanatical enthusiasm of his day, was much disposed toward religious toleration; therefore in the early wars of Catholics and Protestants the city of Beziers became the refuge not only for the terrified Faithful of the surrounding country, but for many hunted Protestants. In the XIII century, the zeal of the Catholic party, reinforced by the political interests of its members, grew most hot and dangerous. Saint Dominic had come into the South; and in his fearful, fiery sermons, he not only prophesied that the Albigenses would swell the number of the d.a.m.ned at the Day of Judgment, but also advocated that, living, they should know the h.e.l.l of Inquisition. Partisans of the Catholic Faith were solemnly consecrated "Crusaders" by Pope Innocent III, and wore the cross in these Wars of Extermination as they had worn it in the Holy Wars of Palestine. In 1209 their army advanced against Beziers, and from out their Councils the leaders sent the Bishop of the city to admonish his flock.

All the inhabitants were summoned to meet him, and they gathered in the choir and transepts of the Cathedral,--the only parts which were finished at that time. One can imagine the anxious citizens crowding into the church, the coming of the angered prelate, whose state and frown were well calculated to intimidate the wavering, and the tense silence as he pa.s.sed, with grave blessing, to the altar. In a few words, he advised them of their peril, spiritual and material; he told them he knew well who was true and who false to the Church, that he had, in written list, the very names of the heretics they seemed to harbour.

Then he begged them to deliver those traitors into his hands, and their city to the Legate of the Holy Father. In fewer words came their answer; "Venerable Father, all that are here are Christians, and we see amongst us only our brethren." Such words were a refusal, a heinous sin, and dread must have been written on every face, as without a word or sign of blessing, the outraged Bishop swept from the church and returned to the camp of their enemy.

The Crusaders' Councils were stormy; for some of the n.o.bles wished to save the Catholics, others cried out for the extermination of the whole rebellious place, and finally the choleric Legate, Armand-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, could stand it no longer, and cried out fiercely, "Kill them all! G.o.d will know His own." The words of their Legate were final, the army attacked the city, and--as Henri Martin finely writes,--"neither funeral tollings nor bell-ringings, nor Canons in all their priestly robes could avail, all were put to the sword; not one was saved, and it was the saddest pity ever seen or heard." The city was pillaged, was fired, was devastated and burned "till no living thing remained."

"No living thing remained" to tell the awful tale, and yet with time and industry, a new and forgetful Beziers has risen to all its old prestige and many times its former size; the Cathedral alone was left, and its most memorable tale to our day is not that of the abiding peace of the Faith, but that of the terrible travesty of religion of the twenty-second of July, hundreds of years ago.

[Sidenote: Narbonne.]

"Narbonne is still mighty and healthful, if one is to judge from the activities of the present day; is picturesque and pleasing, and far more comfortably disposed than many cities with a more magnificently imposing situation." These words, which were running in the traveller's mind, grew more and more derisive, more and more ironical, as he walked about Narbonne. Not in all the South of France had he seen a city so depressing. Her decline has been continuous for the long five hundred years since the Roman d.y.k.es gave way and she was cut off from the sea.

Agde, almost as old, displays the decline of a dignified, retired old age; Saint-Gilles-du-Gard was as dirty, but not a whit as pretentious; Nimes was majestically antique; Narbonne, simply sordid.

It is sad to think that over two thousand years ago she was a second Ma.r.s.eilles, that she was the first of Rome's transalpine colonies, and that under Tiberius her schools rivalled those of the Capital of the world. It is sadder to think that all the magnificence of Roman luxury, of sculptured marble--a Forum, Capitol, Temples, Baths, Triumphal Arches,--stood where dreary rows of semi-modern houses now stand. It is almost impossible to believe in the lost grandeur of this city, and that it was veritably under the tutelage of so great and superb a G.o.d as Mars.

The eventful Christian period of Narbonne was very noted but not very long. Her melancholy decay began as early as the XIV century. Of her great antiquity nothing is left but a few hacked and mutilated carvings; of her ambitious Mediaevalism, nothing but an unfinished group of ecclesiastical buildings. Long gone is the lordly "Narbo" dedicated to Mars, gone the city of the Latin poet, whose words repeated to-day in her streets are a bitter mockery, and gone the stronghold of mediaeval times. There remains a rare phenomenon for cleanly France,--a dirty city, whose older sections are reminiscent of unbeautiful old age, decrepit and unwashed; and whose newly projected boulevards are distinguished by tawdry and pretentious youth.

In the midst of this city, stands a group of mediaeval churchly buildings, the Palace of the prelate, his Cathedral, and an adjoining Cloister. They are all either neglected, unfinished, or re-built; but are of so n.o.ble a plan that the traveller feels a "divine wrath" that they should never have reached their full grandeur of completion, that this great architectural work should have been begun so near the close of the city's prosperity, and that in spite of several efforts it has never been half completed. It is as if a fatality hung over the whole place, and as if all the greatness Narbonne had conceived was predestined to destruction or incompletion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE DOOR OF THE CLOISTER."--NARBONNE.]

Of the three structures, the least interesting is the former Palace of the Archbishops. This is now the Hotel-de-Ville, and as all the body of the structure between the towers of the XII century was built in our day by Viollet-le-Duc, very little of the old Palace can properly be said to exist. Besides its two princ.i.p.al towers, a smaller one, a gate, and a chapel remain. Viollet-le-Duc has constructed the Hotel-de-Ville after the perfectly appropriate style of the XIII century, but its stone is so new and its atmosphere so modern and republican that the traveller left it without regret and made his way up the dark, steep, badly-paved alley-way which leads to the door of the Cloister.

This Cloister, which separated the Palace from the Cathedral, is now dreary and desolate and neglected. Like the Cathedral, it is Gothic, with sadly decaying traces of graceful ornament. The little plot of enclosed ground, which should be planted in gra.s.s or with a few flowers, is a mere dirt court, tramped over by the few worshippers who enter the Cathedral this way. Two or three trees grow as they will, gnarled or straight. The sense of peaceful melancholy which the traveller had felt in the Cloister of Beziers is wanting here. This is a place of deserted solitude; and with a sigh for the beauty that might have been, the traveller crossed the enclosure and entered the church by the cloister-door.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THIS IS A PLACE OF DESERTED SOLITUDE."--NARBONNE.]

Architecturally dissimilar, the fate of this Cathedral is not unlike that of Beauvais. Each was destined to have a completed choir, and each to remain without a nave. At Beauvais the addition of transepts adds very materially to the beauty of the Cathedral. At Narbonne no transepts exist. There is simply a choir, which makes a very singular disposition of the church both religious and architectural. Entering the gates which lead from the ambulatory to the choir, the traveller found that Benediction had just begun. On his immediate right, before the altar all aglow with lights, were the officiating priests and the altar-boys; on his left, in the choir, was the congregation in the Canons' stalls; and at the back, as at the end of a nave, rose the organ.