How France Built Her Cathedrals Part 25

Florent-les-Saumur for a four days' visit to his d.u.c.h.ess, promising[194]

that anxious young wife that she would bring back her husband safe and sound.

Fontevrault's abbatial, where culminated the art of the cupola church, is the chief excursion to be made from Saumur. It can be reached by a ten-mile trolley ride. Only three miles from Fontevrault, and a pleasant cross-country walk from it, is the beautiful Plantagenet Gothic church of St. Martin, at Candes,[195] crowned with battlements, on the highland above the confluence of the Vienne and the Loire. In the ancient abbey here St. Martin died as the IV century closed. A chapel to the north of the choir marks the site of his cell, and its window recalls the pious piracy of his loyal parishioners of Tours, who claimed his body for burial, but who, knowing that Candes would not give it up, came by night and stole it away; and quite rightly they had judged, for when, centuries later, the Northmen invasions forced Tours to send its great relic for safe-keeping to Auxerre, it took an army of six thousand men to get it back.

The present choir of St. Martin's at Candes was built in the latter half of the XII century (c. 1180). Fifty years later rose the nave, justly considered one of the most brilliant examples of Plantagenet Gothic architecture, its model, not the unaisled cupola-church, but the Romanesque church of Poitou, whose side aisles are so high that their lancets are the only lighting of the edifice. St. Martin's hall-like interior of three s.p.a.cious aisles is inundated with light. The well-proportioned cl.u.s.tered piers rising from pavement to vault-springing are placed considerably out of alignment, and in a number of other arrangements the architect here followed his personal bent. In the western porch the ribs of several Plantagenet vault sections fall on a central pillar.

THE CATHEDRAL AT POITIERS[196]

_Vexilla Regis prodeunt_ _Fulget Crucis mysterium_ _Qua vita mortem pertulit_ _Et morte vitam protulit._

Abroad the regal banners fly And bear the mystic Cross on high, That Cross whereon Life suffered Death And gave us Life with Dying breath.

_Impleta sunt quae concinit_ _David fideli carmine,_ _Dicendo nationibus_ _Regnavit a ligno Deus._

That which the prophet-king of old Hath in mysterious verse foretold Is now accomplished whilst we see G.o.d ruling nations from a Tree.

--FORTUNATUS, bishop of Poitiers (599-607).[197]

The n.o.blest Gothic monument due to Henry Plantagenet and Alienor of Aquitaine is the cathedral church at Poitiers, founded by them in 1162 about the same time that, in Paris, Louis VII witnessed the laying of the corner stone for a new chief church in his capital. Never were contemporary edifices more unlike in their form and their informing spirit. In Notre Dame of Paris breathes the struggle of human existence and that Christian resignation voiced by the XIII-century Franciscan in the _Dies Irae_. St. Peter's Cathedral at Poitiers rings with Christian joy, with the triumphal strains of the hymn composed by its VI-century bishop for the arrival from Constantinople of the True Cross relic. From the hour that the ancient ecclesiastical city marched forth with banners flying to meet the Cross, Poitiers has held it to be a tree of royal honor, not of pathetic agony. Her greatest bishop, St. Hilary, was western Christendom's champion for the Son's divinity when the Arian heresy attacked it. Clovis defeated the Arian Visigoths at Poitiers in 508; Charles Martel checked the Mohammedans at Poitiers in 732.

A city's spiritual history speaks by its monuments. In the high place of honor in Poitiers' cathedral of St. Peter, hangs a gleaming canticle of translucent mosaic, a window which many hold to be the finest in the world. It celebrates G.o.d ruling nations from a tree. It is a pa.s.sion and a triumph, an agony and an apotheosis. Eight centuries divide the inspiration of the Crucifixion window from St. Hilary's struggle with Arianism, six centuries from the canticle of Bishop Venantius Fortunatus, but Hilary's affirmation and the rejoicing of Fortunatus live in it, and through it have been pa.s.sed on to us.

Poitiers Cathedral is a s.p.a.cious hall-church illuminated by large lancets that seem to be chanting Alleluias, yet whose piety is plain and robust. It is a church loyal to indigenous art traditions, yet blending those sober Romanesque inheritances of Poitou with the delicate grace of Plantagenet Gothic. Its loveliness is severe, its slenderness is st.u.r.dy.

St. Peter's both imposes and allures.

Poitiers was the cradle of Alienor of Aquitaine's brilliant and debonaire line of troubadours, crusaders, and church builders.

Charlemagne gave them the t.i.tle of Duke of Aquitaine for their services against Islam. The first warrior duke died a hermit at St.

Guilhem-le-Desert, which became a Midi pilgrim shrine where, in the Gothic dawn, appeared a very early use of diagonals, profiled like those of the Ile-de-France. A duke of Aquitaine founded Cluny, the greatest building energy of the ages. Another of the dynasty of the Guillaumes aided Bishop Fulbert to build Chartres, and, when fire wiped out Poitiers Cathedral, reconstructed it in Romanesque form. Guillaume VIII and Guillaume IX built at Bordeaux the churches of Ste. Croix, St.

Seurin, and St. Andre. In Poitiers they raised anew Notre Dame-la-Grande and St. Hilaire, and founded Montierneuf,[198] blessed by Urban II in 1096. Alienor's grandfather, Guillaume IX, the first-known troubadour, especially favored Fontevrault. Her father was that Guillaume X, with the appet.i.tes of eight men, an open boaster of his crimes, whom it took St. Bernard to beat to his knees in penitence, after which he pa.s.sed out of history in the odor of sanct.i.ty as pilgrim to Compostela.

With the art of the builder Alienor's own links were multiple. When Bishop Geoffrey de Leves took charge of her as a young bride in Bordeaux, he was raising at Chartres the most beautiful tower in the world. She a.s.sisted at St. Denis' dedication and knew Abbot Suger well; at Vezelay she watched the Burgundians sculpting a portal of paradise.

Through all her crowded life, with all her reckless sins upon her, Alienor was loyal to her own region. She began Poitiers Cathedral in the same decade that she had her favorite son Richard the Lion-hearted installed as ruler of Aquitaine--another troubadour duke--seating him in the abbot's chair at St. Hilaire's, according to ancient custom. She blended with her own Poitou's Romanesque what was choicest in the Gothic art of her Angevin husband.

Poitiers Cathedral was the prototype of monuments such as Candes and Puy-Notre-Dame, in whose interiors Alienor's own "high grace, the dower of queens," seems incarnate. An Angevin architect probably designed St.

Peter's at Poitiers. The works started at the east end, which is square, and rises from the down-slope of the hill like a solid fortress, a hundred and fifty feet in height; Coligny's troops were one day to riddle with bullets that big quadrangular target. So thick was the eastern wall that the round chapels ending the choir disappeared in its depth.

The easternmost bays and the south arm of the transept were built about the same time, soon after 1160, and their masonry roof belongs to the first phase of the Gothic of the West. Over the crossing is a six-branch vault; for the rest of the church, the eight-branch type was used. The lower half of the inclosure walls is ornamented with a blind arcade above which runs a circulating gallery carried on corbels carved with fantasy. Again was used the artifice employed in Poitiers' Romanesque church of Notre Dame-la-Grande, whereby from the eastern end onward the edifice grew slightly wider and higher. The axial line deviates considerably, and it is known that this cathedral rose during different periods.

While the plan and the beginning of the work were of Alienor and Henry's day, the greater part of the church was erected under their great-grandson, Alphonse of Poitiers, the brother of St. Louis. When he died in 1271, the two westernmost bays were incomplete. After a lull, the work was resumed at the close of the century. In the XIV century was erected the not very interesting west frontispiece which stands below the street level and which is too wide for its height; it would have been better had the towers been set in a line with the aisles and not planted beyond them like the towers of Rouen and Bourges. The first of the Avignon popes, Clement V, builder of the Rayonnant Gothic choir of Bordeaux Cathedral, watched Poitiers' Rayonnant facade rising during the sixteen months that he spent in the city. While here he learned that fire had damaged St. John Lateran's at Rome and ordered it to be reconstructed. The last windows in St. Pierre's Cathedral have the Flamboyant tracery of Jean de Berry's time. That amateur of art--sixth in descent from Henry and Alienor--left his mark all through middle France.

The interior of Poitiers Cathedral is an ample parallelogram of eight bays, divided into three aisles of equal height, by a dozen widely s.p.a.ced piers, each of which is a cl.u.s.ter of lovely shafts rising from pavement to vault-springing. The eighteen _bombe_ vault sections are grace itself. As the light floods in from the big lancets in the side walls, one scarcely notices that this church has ground supports. The plan of Poitou's Romanesque churches--seen at its best at St.

Savin[199]--shows adroit construction, since it employed the aisles to b.u.t.tress the princ.i.p.al span, and used one roof to cover the entire structure.

Poitiers' memorable Crucifixion window is in the flat, eastern wall of the central aisle. The three windows in that square chevet belong to the transition between the XII and XIII centuries. That to the north was the gift of Maurice de Blason, who became bishop of Poitiers in 1198, and who is supposed to have been also the donor of the Crucifixion, whose date has given rise to controversy. The straight saddle-bars still used in it were abandoned after 1200. In the lower panel of the central light, the founders of the cathedral, Henry and Alienor, are pictured kneeling. Alienor knew well Suger's school of gla.s.smakers, and as M.

Male has proved that all the XII-century windows in western France proceed from those of St. Denis, very likely the ex-queen of France was instrumental in spreading their fame. At Poitiers the apostles gaze upward in quite the same att.i.tude as those in the Ascension window at Le Mans, an accepted work of Suger's craftsmen.

Blue as profound as sapphires and a crimson that glows like blood-red rubies make of Poitiers' Crucifix an unapproachable glory. The genius who conceived it had brooded over the ecstatic hymn composed for the glad celebration of November 19, 569. This is the Tree of Life, effulgent in fecundity, on its branches hanging such fruit as the Ransom of the World, the vine that gives sweet wine of the red blood of the Lord. No agonizing Christ on Poitiers' Cross _ornata regis purpura_. The Saviour's eyes are wide open to indicate that the Christ dies not. The arms are extended to great length as if embracing the entire world.[200]

The halo is marked by the Greek cross, emblem of divinity. In many other chevets of France the Crucifixion holds the central place, in the Lady chapel at Tours, in the clearstory at Rouen, in the ambulatory at Bourges, in St. Remi's wide gallery at Rheims, in the square east wall of Moulins, and at Ervy. And in many ways was the Sacrifice presented; sometimes the Cross became an apple-decked Tree of Knowledge with Adam and Eve beside it; sometimes the Saviour's arms were high uplifted and angels received the precious blood in chalices. Never was the meaning of Calvary presented with more profundity than at Poitiers, whose ancient bishops had suffered exile to defend the Son and written verses to exalt him.

The other lancets of the cathedral are in most part XIII-century work of the closely woven pattern type that produces scintillation; contrary to the more general usage the medallions are to be read from the top downward. As color schemes they have been composed with extraordinary care. Few church interiors can equal this for jeweled riches: 'And the building of the wall thereof was of jasper stone.... And the foundations of the wall were adorned with all manner of precious stones--jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and amethyst.'

Poitiers' ancient church of Notre Dame-la-Grande has the appearance of a cathedral, and its elaborate front, the best of all Romanesque facades, is cla.s.sed among peerless works such as Vezelay's portico, St. Gilles'

portal, and the Auvergnat apses. The pre-Gothic school of Poitou, formulated as early as 1050, excelled in sculptured frontispieces, decorated apses, and ornate window frames. Sometimes the side aisles bracing the princ.i.p.al span were made too narrow, as here in Notre Dame, but where the school reached its structural apogee as in St.

Savin-sur-Gartemps (which has lofty ample aisles and splendidly carved capitals), it can hold its own with that of any region. Poitou has been called the paradise for lovers of Romanesque architecture.

In Notre Dame-la-Grande are some XII-century frescoes, but its modern experiment in polychromy is distressing. Many a gathering has the ancient church seen. When in 1100 a church council at Poitiers censured the illegal marriage of the king of France and the fair Bertrada de Montfort, Guillaume IX, the troubadour duke of Aquitaine who was present--and in much the same predicament, living with the wife of a neighboring lord--made a scene and indignantly left the hall. Stones were thrown at the churchmen who dared censure an open scandal. Then brave Robert d'Abrissel, founder of Fontevrault, tore off his cloak and stood forth, in token of his willingness to suffer in so good a cause.[201]

Poitiers' abbey church of St. Hilaire has much interest for archaeologists.[202] The Vandals destroyed a church here, the Saracens burned another, twice was it wrecked by Norse pirates during the IX century when St. Hilary's relics were carried to Le Puy Cathedral for safety. Then a daughter of the Duke of Normandy, Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, had her architect, Gautier Coorland, rebuild the abbatial, which was dedicated in 1049. Owing to continuous reconstructions, little of that period remains, save in the ambulatory and in the tower which once stood isolated. The XII century added the oblong cupolas whose only counterparts are to be found at Le Puy. To support its new cupola-vaulting, St. Hilaire built two rows of pillars with a narrow pa.s.sageway between, and when, in later times, outer aisles were added, the interior was given the uncommon aspect of triple aisles.

A Huguenot sacking worked irreparable damage, and after the Revolution the westernmost bays of the church had to be demolished.

In Merovingian times the two most-visited shrines in France were St.

Hilary's at Poitiers, and St. Martin's at Tours. When Hilary, the thirteenth bishop here (d. 368), returned from his exile in Phrygia, whither he had been driven for combating the Arian heresy, he brought back from the East a fondness for the interpretation of Scripture by allegory which was to have a strong influence on the iconography of Gothic cathedrals. To pray by St. Martin's tomb at Tours there came north the Italian poet, Venantius Fortunatus, who continued his pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Hilary, the master who had trained Martin in the spiritual life. Never was he to quit Poitiers, where, in 607 he died, its revered bishop.

In those days, Radegund, the Thuringian wife of Clotaire, son of Clovis, had retired to Poitiers to pa.s.s her life in study and prayer. Scripture and the works of the church fathers were read in Greek and Hebrew, in her cloister. About her gathered pious maidens, chiefly of the Gallo-Roman stock, harried by the rougher peoples from the north.

Fortunatus became for Queen Radegund and her Abbess Agnes a sort of self-appointed intendant; he sent them gifts of fruit with verses.

Puvis de Chavannes has painted it all on the walls of Poitiers' Town Hall.

St. Radegund's tomb became a pilgrim shrine. The savants see no reason to doubt the genuine antiquity of the queen's sarcophagus of black marble now in the crypt of her church, part of which crypt escaped the fire of 1083 and so dates before 1000. The new apse was dedicated in 1099. The three big bays of the aisleless nave are covered by Plantagenet Gothic vaults with eight branches, and along the walls are the same blind arcades and carved carbels as in the cathedral. The sacristy shows an octagonal dome on ribs. The church has no transept, but over the north portal is a XIII-century rose window of deep blue hue, between which and the apse are some XIV-century windows that experimented not very successfully with colored figures in white gla.s.s.

The porch is good Flamboyant Gothic.

Poitiers boasts the oldest extant Christian church in France, the baptistry of St. Jean, in whose walls are Gallo-Roman IV-century vestiges.[203] There is VII-century Merovingian work in its apsidal chapels, and the later Romanesque and Gothic times added their quotas.

The ancient well in which baptism by submersion was practiced has been preserved. A son of Poitiers feels doubly a Christian if baptized in the church of St. Jean's.

The venerable little edifice to-day lies many feet below the level of the city streets, for Poitiers escaped few of the sackings of history.

For safety from the Barbarian invasions some rich Gallo-Roman must have buried the statue of Minerva exhumed in 1902, in the garden of a girls'

school, and now in the town's museum. It is a most lovely Greek marble of the VI century, B.C.[204]

Henry Plantagenet and Alienor of Aquitaine built in Poitiers the guard's hall of the Counts' Palace, in the center of the town, on its highest eminence.[205] The wall-arcading is like contemporary work in the cathedral and the church of St. Radegund. In late-Gothic times the south wall was remade. In this hall the second husband of Isabella of Angouleme made amends to his suzerain, Alphonse of Poitiers, for the war to which her jealous haughtiness had forced him. In this hall in 1307-08 the accused Templars were interrogated by Clement V, the pontiff who initiated the residence at Avignon, and the consequent papal subserviency to the French crown, Philippe le Bel cowed the pope, and the group of anti-cleric legists who controlled the king arranged that only picked specimens of the doomed military Order should appear at Poitiers. The royal coffers were empty and those of the Templars were full.

Torture and intimidation had wrung from all too many of the monk-knights false avowals of guilt. In Spain, where the investigation was carried on without torture, the bishops found no heresy in the Order; instead, they bore testimony to its exemplary standing. One brave old crusader raised his voice in honest speech: "Let him have a care," wrote Joinville, "this king who now reigns. Let him amend his ways, lest G.o.d strike him down without mercy." The Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques Molay, was burned publicly in Paris, calling on king and pope to meet him before G.o.d's judgment seat within the year. A month later Clement V died, and before 1314 closed, the young king met sudden death. And the people recalled that when Clement was crowned at Lyons, the tiara had been knocked from his head by a collapsing wall and one of its precious jewels lost.

Less discouraging were other doings of Clement V in Poitiers. Here he dated the nomination of John of Montecorvino (d. 1328), pioneer of Christian missionaries, to the see of Peking. Armed crusading had run its course; the crusade by preaching, prayer, and penance was to begin.

Already in 1245 Innocent IV had sent Dominicans to Persia and Franciscans farther east, St. Louis had sent William de Rubruquis to the Mongols, and those astonishing Venetian merchants; the Polos, had roused the papacy to the spiritual needs of Cathay, the far Cathay of the mediaeval tradition, to which Columbus was seeking a shorter route when he accidentally discovered America. For thirty years John of Montecorvino missionized Tartary. He translated the New Testament and the Psalms. To encourage missionary activity, Clement V ordered that Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic be taught publicly at Rome, Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca.

The Hundred Years' War, so fatal to French architectural progress, surged round Poitiers. After Crecy, in 1346, the hall of the Counts'

Palace was damaged by the English. In the environs of Poitiers took place the bitter French defeat of 1356, when King Jean le Bon was made prisoner. "_Et fut la morte toute la fleur de chevalerie de France_,"

says Froissart. The siege by Duguesclin to recapture the hill city from the English damaged its monuments. When the Duke of Berry, son of King Jean the Good, became master of Poitiers he undertook to restore the Counts' Palace, and he had noted Flamboyant Gothic masters construct for him the splendid triple chimney piece of the guard hall, decorated about 1383 by Andre Beauneveu with statues of Charles VI, of his wife Isabeau of Bavaria, and of Jean of Berry and his first d.u.c.h.ess. In the pignon above the great fireplaces was set some XIV-century gla.s.s. Guy de Dammartin re-established the donjon tower called Maubergeon, now cut off at the third story. The images of the counts of Poitiers, decorating it, belong to that phase of French sculpture which preceded the Franco-Flamand school at Dijon. Before transalpine influences were imported, a truly national renaissance had begun. The Tour Maubergeon and the pignon of the great hall are all that remain of the palaces built at Poitiers by Jean de Berry; but what they were can be seen in his illuminated Book of Hours now in Chantilly's museum.

The historic hall of Poitiers has its memories of Jeanne d'Arc. Hither, in 1429, Charles XII brought her to be examined by learned men. When one of them told her, with condescension, that if G.o.d wished to deliver France he had no need of men-of-arms, swift was Jeanne's reply, "Man does the battling and G.o.d gives the victory." Finally her judges reported to the king that she was of sound sense and a true Christian and appeared to be sent of G.o.d, and that, given the desperate need of the kingdom, they advised the king to put her at the head of an army for the relief of Orleans. Decision momentous for the fate of France!

Jeanne, during her trial at Rouen, often referred to the answers she had given to her honest judges at Poitiers: "If you do not believe me, send to Poitiers, where I was questioned before.... It is written in the book at Poitiers." Cauchon might wear a miter, well she knew it was not the Church which persecuted her, though the English left no stone unturned to have it so appear. Jeanne in Poitiers lodged with Maitre Jean Rabateau, advocate, and it was the duty of his good dame to spy on her night and day. Many years after she testified to Jeanne's habit of long prayer in the night-time. To test the maid's virtue the king's own mother-in-law visited her. That able Yolande of Aragon had brought up Charles VII. Her own son, the young knight Rene d'Anjou, was soon to fight under Jeanne, and Yolande, herself, convinced of the Maid's mission, helped with funds for the expedition to Orleans. They say that Jeanne made answer to the court ladies with such sweetness and grace that she drew tears from their eyes.

The old hill city of Poitiers, so ecclesiastical, so full of national memories, has had the good sense to keep itself _tres province_, and its street directory still makes a sort of calendar of saints. At Bourges, the mania to wipe out its past has reached such a pa.s.s that the rue St.

Michel is now the rue Michel-Servet and the rue St. Fulgent the rue Fulton. Poitiers has no desire to blot out her high historic memories.