How France Built Her Cathedrals Part 27

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Le Puy in Old Auvergne_]

The cathedral of Le Puy has been venerated and visited by practically every ruler of France from Charlemagne to Francis I. This ancient city was almost chosen as the meeting place for launching the First Crusade.

Urban II paused here in 1095, and the bishop of Le Puy, Adhemar de Monteil (1087-1100), accompanied him to Clermont, and when the pope's great rallying speech was ended it was Bishop Adhemar, his face shining with enthusiasm, who first stepped forward to take the cross. Urban appointed him the spiritual chief of the expedition, and his skill in military strategics proved of use since he had been a knight before becoming a churchman. This good man died in the grievous days at Antioch, worn out with his efforts to check disorders in the crusaders'

camp. To Adhemar de Monteil has been attributed the _Salve Regina_ called in the olden times the anthem of Puy. To Le Puy's famous shrine St. Louis presented a thorn from the Crown he had obtained from Constantinople, and on his way back from his first crusade he deposited in the church the curious image of a black Virgin given him in Egypt.

THE CATHEDRAL OF LIMOGES[215]

Bien me sourit le doux printemps, Qui fait venir fleurs et feuillages; Et bien me plait lorsque j'entends Des oiseaux le gentil ramage.

Mais j'aime mieux quand sur le pre Je vois l'etendard arbore, Flottant comme un signal de guerre.

Quand j'entends par mont et par vaux Courir chevalier et chevaux Et sous leur pas fremir la terre, Et gens crier: "A l'aide! A l'aide!"

De voir les pet.i.ts et les grands Dans les fosses roulers mourants.

A ce plaisir tout plaisir cede.[216]

--BERTRAN DE BORN (1140-1215).

Although in plan, in the mode of construction, in the covering of chapels and various details, the resemblances between the cathedrals of Clermont and Limoges are such that it is thought the same Jean Deschamps designed both, the cathedral of St. etienne at Limoges possesses its own individual character because of the fine-grained, compact granite of which it is built and the unusual talent of its masons. M.

Viollet-le-Duc considered the apse of Limoges one of the most scientific of Gothic constructions. The very beautiful leaf foliage is as crisply cut as when it came from the master's hand. Full of character are the profiles of the molds used in the triforium for decorative effect.

Because of the enduring quality of their building material, the Romanesque edifices of Limousin lasted so well that there was little temptation to tear them down in order to subst.i.tute Gothic churches.

Till the Revolution, Limoges kept its great pre-Gothic abbatial of St.

Martial, and its cathedral was, like that of Clermont in Auvergne, an isolated example of Gothic. Like Clermont's chief church, the western bays of Limoges were not built till the XIX century. The general aspect of St. etienne is Rayonnant. Its Flamboyant Gothic additions were held in rigorous restraint. When Bishop Aimeric de la Serre (1246-73), a man of wealth, determined to remake his church, he willed his fortune to the enterprise. As Bishop Aimeric had just died, the first stone was laid on June 1, 1273, by Helie de Malemort, doyen of the chapter. For over fifty years they built steadily till under Bishop Helie de Talleyrand the choir was completed in 1327. A second period of work, from 1344 to the end of the century, resulted in the south arm of the transept whose rose is Rayonnant, whereas that to the north is Flamboyant. In its tendency to eliminate the horizontal line Limoges is eminently a church of the XIV century. The shafts before the piers rise unbroken from pavement to vault-springing; the pier arches at the apse curve are very pointed. Yet there is no geometric dryness in this interior. Plain wall surfaces above the main arcade and around the triforium and clearstory add to its robust aspect.

In 1370 the Black Prince sacked Limoges and left little but the cathedral standing. Froissart recounts that "there was no pity taken of the poor people who had wrought no manner of treason ... more than three thousand persons of all ages and both s.e.xes were slain that day ... and the city clean brent and brought to destruction." It took time and treasure to repair the devastation. Only from 1458 to 1490 were the two easternmost bays of the nave erected.

The fourth period of energy at Limoges, from 1515 to 1530, created a gem of Flamboyant Gothic, the transept's north facade, which is called the Portail de St. Jean, as it stood near a church dedicated to the Baptist.

Bishop Philippe de Montmorency began it, and his successor, Cesar de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, completed it, as their carved armorials bear witness. Because it stood on the emplacement of the old Romanesque transept, it was somewhat too narrow. To obviate that impression the corner b.u.t.tresses were offset at an angle. The wooden doors of this, the main entrance to Limoges Cathedral, are of the Renaissance. They represent the stoning of St. Stephen, and the first Christian missionary of Limousin, St. Martial, to whom an early local martyr, St. Valerie, is presenting her decapitated head. The ring of St. Valerie gave symbolic invest.i.ture to the dukes of Aquitaine.

Limoges was active in the Renaissance days. Her bishop, Jean de Langeac, erected an elaborate _jube_ between choir and transept, a rood loft which is one ma.s.s of hanging keystones, channeling, bas-reliefs, and arabesque panels, with six big statues of the Virtues made in 1536 by an artist of Tours named Jean Arnaud. It is plain to see that the Renaissance was in full swing. The Labors of Hercules were set forth, and Bacchus was placed beside Ambrose and Augustine. Perhaps the huge _jube_ and the episcopal tomb both came from the studios of Tours, where had settled the earliest artists of the transalpine Renaissance. The master hand that made the bishop's tomb, says M. Male, followed Durer, but his eight Apocalypse panels were an improvement over the designs of the German. Unfortunately the bronze rec.u.mbent figure of the munificent prelate whose pride it was to adorn his church was melted up for pennies in 1793. There are two other notable tombs in the choir's procession path--that of a bishop-builder, Raynaud de la Porte--the only funeral monument in France that represents stone curtains drawn aside by angels--and the tomb of his nephew, Bernard Brun (d. 1350). Three of the Avignon popes were natives of art-loving Limousin.

The Revolution robbed Limoges of the n.o.ble abbey church of St. Martial, which had been dedicated by the pope of the First Crusade in 1095. St.

Martial had formed the center of the Chateau section of Limoges, ruled by its own counts with a totally different administration from that of the Cite division, where the cathedral stood, and whose civic master was the bishop. Many a feud had Cite with Chateau. The abbatial of the "apostle of Aquitaine" would tell us the story had not blind pa.s.sion laid it in ruins.

For three hundred years no effort was made at Limoges to complete its cathedral's nave until, through the enterprise of Monseigneur Duquesnay, the first stone of the sorely needed western church was laid in 1876 and the structure finished in 1888. It was joined, by means of a narthex or forechurch, to the ancient tower which had been built isolated before the Romanesque cathedral of St. etienne. In its three lower stories, now hidden by c.u.mbersome masonry propping, save on the east side, the tower belonged to the cathedral which Urban II blessed in 1095 when he dedicated St. Martial's abbatial. Its four upper stories, mainly of the XII century, were begun by Bishop Sebrand-Chabot while the overlord of the province, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, was on his crusading venture. In this very region, at the castle of Chalus near Limoges, the Lion-hearted met his death in 1199.

The dialect of Limousin was considered the purest form of Provencal by the troubadours. Here in the west center of France, Coeur-de-Lion's troubadour friend, the malignant breeder of dissensions, Bertran de Born, had his castle of Hautefort south of Limoges. He excited Henry Plantagenet against his sons, and spurred on the sons to rebellion.

Unlike the gentle Valerie who carries in her hands her own head with right Christian pride since she lost it to witness to the planting of the Cross, Bertran de Born, sower of discord, is represented swinging his severed head by the hair like a lantern. So Dante saw him in the ninth chasm of h.e.l.l herded with the malicious ones who had abused the attribute of reason: "I made the father and the son rebels to each other," he wailed. "Because I parted persons thus united, I carry my brain, ah, me! parted from its source. Thus the law of retribution is observed in me."[217] And equally merciless has been the law of retribution for Limoges, than which no other city has suffered more from pillage, pest, and fire. Froissart tells us that during centuries the frontier lands of Limousin and Gascony exercised brigandage as a _metier_.

Like the three lower stories of the tower, the crypt belonged to the XI-century Romanesque cathedral of Limoges. On its groin vault was painted a Byzantinesque Christ surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists. The cathedral has recently lost by theft some precious enamels. From father to son in Limoges pa.s.sed the skill in this beautiful art craft. St. Eloi was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Limoges in the VII century. At Le Mans is the XII-century plaque of Geoffrey Plantagenet, at Mozac an unrivaled Limousin reliquary, and Jean, duc de Berry, prince of amateurs, once possessed the best XIII-century work of Limoges enamel, the gold King's Cup, now in the British Museum. In St.

Pierre's at Chartres are the splendid Apostle plaques of the XVI century by Leonard Limosin. The earlier method had been to sink the enamel like a jewel in cells or _cloisons_, hence the name _cloisonne_, but the Renaissance artists used no inclosing ribbon of metal.

The only ancient windows remaining in the cathedral's clearstory are the two at the apse end, which a canon, Pierre de la Rodier, presented. When he became bishop of Carca.s.sonne he built the south chapel that opens from St. Nazaire's nave (1323-30). In the cathedral chapels are some XV-and XVI-century lights, and fragments of earlier gla.s.s. On the same river, Vienne, which at Limoges is crossed by two n.o.ble XIII-century bridges, lies Eymoutiers, some thirty miles to the west, between Clermont and Limoges. Its remarkable collection of windows is entirely of the XV century; each panel contains a single figure in an architectural setting.

French writers claim that between Eymoutiers and Limoges took place the apparition of the Infant Jesus to St. Anthony of Padua which became a favorite theme with painters, but the Italians insist that Padua was the privileged spot. Limoges city has its St. Anthony tradition. In its square, they say, while the saint was preaching in 1225, his audience was untouched by a rainstorm that inundated the other townspeople. As we have seen that the building of great churches was preceded in most cases by a spiritual regeneration, it is not extreme to think that the fervor roused in the Midi by the great son of St. Francis had much to do with the laying of the corner stone of Limoges Cathedral in 1273.

THE CATHEDRAL OF BORDEAUX[218]

Celuy qui, d'une doulceur et facilite naturelle, mepriseroit les offenses recues, feroit chose tres belle et digne de louange: mais celuy qui, picque et oultre jusques au vif d'une offense, s'armeroit des armes de la raison contre ce furieux appet.i.t de vengeance, et aprez un grand conflict s'en rendroit enfin maistre, feroit sans doubte beaucoup plus. Celuy la feroit bien; et celuy cy, vertueus.e.m.e.nt: l'une action se pourroit dire bonte: l'aultre, vertu; car il semble que le nom de la vertu presuppose de la difficulte et du contraste. Nous nommons Dieu bon, fort, et liberal, et juste, mais nous ne le nommons pas _vertueux_.--MONTAIGNE (Mayor of Bordeaux from 1581 to 1585).

While Bordeaux has the warm fertility of the Midi, there is much of the north in the big commercial city. And its cathedral of St. Andre is typical of the dual temperament. The nave is the aisleless, wide hall preferred by meridionals, the choir has the procession path with its circlet of chapels loved by the north. Excepting Le Mans, Amiens, and Rheims, it is the longest cathedral in France.

Bordeaux was an important city in the wide possessions of the dukes of Aquitaine. In 1137 Alienor, the daughter of the last William, was wedded in its cathedral to the prince who immediately ascended the French throne as Louis VII. When she left him after fifteen years and wedded Henry Plantagenet the rich city on the Garonne pa.s.sed under English rule. In all the vicissitudes of the three hundred years that followed, from 1154 to 1453, Bordeaux' self-interest kept her faithful to her masters beyond the sea, the chief customers in her wine trade. Bordeaux remained French, however, in race and in the expression of race, architecture. Alienor's second husband, Henry II of England, was, like herself, more French than English; of his thirty-four years' reign he pa.s.sed only twelve in England, and his son, Coeur-de-Lion, was another Anglo-Frenchman.

The hardy, domelike vaults carried on diagonals that span the nave of Angers' Cathedral (c. 1150) have been considered the earliest extant examples of the Gothic of the West. And yet it is possible, thinks M.

Brutails, the erudite archivist of the Gironde, that the vaults of the same type which were built over the nave of the present cathedral of Bordeaux antedated the notable ones of Angers. In Bordeaux occurred one of the premature isolated examples of Gothic ribs under the south tower of Ste. Croix. During a revival of builder's energy, from 1052 to 1127 (under the eighth and ninth dukes of Aquitaine), Ste. Croix and St.

Seurin were reconstructed and St. Andre begun. It seems more reasonable to suppose, however, that Anjou, where first the cupola church of Aquitaine met the diagonal ribs of northern France, should have been the cradle of that phase of the new architecture which we call Plantagenet.

The nave of St. Andre is a difficult page to read, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance as it now is. The Romano-Byzantine church here which Urban II blessed in 1096 exists only in vestiges in the lower walls on either side of the wide hall. Originally the church had side aisles, but they were obliterated when the XII century spanned the entire width with Angevin diagonals. The side walls were then made into two stories, a lower wall arcade surmounted by a window story, such as we have seen in the cathedrals at Angers and Angouleme. In 1437 an earthquake caused the collapse of the masonry roof of the four westernmost bays, which were recovered by a Flamboyant Gothic vaulting rich with supplementary ribs.

The west front of St. Andre never was developed, as the church ab.u.t.ted there on the ancient ramparts. The main entrance was the Porte Royale in the north flank of the nave, whose statues, made in the golden hour of St. Louis' reign, were used as models by Viollet-le-Duc when he refilled the empty niches of Notre Dame at Paris. There can be no clearer exposition of what qualities were lost in Rayonnant Gothic than to pa.s.s from this apogee portal to the smoother, more conventional images at the northern entrance to the transept; in the rugged apostles, full of character, is the touch which all time recognizes as genius; in the aristocratic churchmen of the XIV-century door is mere talent. To the nave of Bordeaux a XVI-century archbishop, Charles de Grammont, who initiated here the Italian Renaissance, added an elaborate b.u.t.tress.

That miniature facade is called the _contrefort de Grammont_.[219]

Under Archbishop de Mallemort (1227-60) St. Andre superseded St. Seurin as the cathedral of Bordeaux. As late as 1259 it lacked a suitable chevet. Gascony was in chaos in those years when Henry III, builder of Westminster Abbey, sent the Earl of Leicester, Simon de Montfort (son of the leader of the Albigensian Crusade), to straighten out the disorders. That strong administrator, who was on the const.i.tutional liberal side in English politics, was frustrated by Midi corruption.

Only as the XIII century closed was built the present splendid choir of Bordeaux Cathedral, a cla.s.sic work of Rayonnant Gothic before that phase turned to geometric rule. How technique cramped and killed inspiration can be seen in the later Rayonnant church of St. Michel. At St. Andre, it is true, the capitals are slight and the profiles not overvirile.

Decadence is foreshadowed, but not yet is the art academic and wiredrawn. The Midi appears in the clearstory and triforium, which do not fill the entire s.p.a.ce between the shafts. The partiality of the meridional for unenc.u.mbered interiors had something to do with making the procession path thirty feet wide. Most grateful is the traveler for a curving aisle around the sanctuary after having sojourned among the cupola and hall-like churches of Anjou and Aquitaine. Bordeaux' choir possesses some good stained gla.s.s of its own period, and some of its b.u.t.tress statues are among the best imagery of the XIV century. Mary Magdalene, carrying her vase of ointment, appears as a chatelaine of the Middle Ages with the bandeau under her chin then fashionable; Alienor of Aquitaine could not have been very unlike her.

The most active patron of St. Andre's Gothic choir was the archbishop of the city, Bertrand de Got, who in 1305 became Clement V, the first Avignon pope. When he died, in 1314, the new choir was practically completed. His image stands at the trumeau of the transept's north door (the head and hand are reproductions), and around him are six prelates who may be intended to represent the French bishops whom Clement raised to the cardinalate. In technique these images may surpa.s.s the weather-beaten apostles at the Porte Royale (c. 1260), but they are their inferior in spirit. Five of the statues are studies from the same model. Casts of the transept portal of Bordeaux are in the Kensington Museum and in the Trocadero. The Avignon popes were the chief art patrons of the XV century, with the four Valois princes--Charles V of France and his brothers at Dijon, Bourges, and Angers. No pontiff was more munificent than Clement V. While he was bishop at St.

Bertrand-de-Comminges (Haute Garonne)[220] he renewed that small cathedral, which consists of two unequal parts, a Romanesque facade, donjon tower, and forechurch of the day when St. Bertrand had been bishop (1073-1123), and an unaisled Gothic choir, begun by Bertrand de Got, continued by him while pope and finished by Bishop Hugues de Chatillon, who died in 1352.

The Rayonnant chevet of Bordeaux Cathedral and its transept, two of whose towers are spire-crowned, compose an effective architectural group, with a detached campanile in the gardens. In order to give employment to the poor, Archbishop Pierre Berland, who had been a shepherd's son, erected the graceful, isolated tower for bells to hang in, "that G.o.d might be praised in the sky." And the same generations built St. Michel's tower (1472-92), the highest beacon in southwest France, mutilated mercilessly by M. Paul Abadie's restoration. The lifeless church before which it stands is proof of how much needed was the vim, even if often exaggerated and bizarre, of the late-Gothic movement. M. Enlart considers Bordeaux and Bayonne[221] to be two of the princ.i.p.al doors by which the English Curvilinear style entered France.

There its name is Flamboyant Gothic. And yet in this same Midi, M.

Anthyme Saint-Paul, who denies the English origin of French late-Gothic architecture, claims to have found proof of his theory that already in Apogee Gothic and in the Rayonnant hour were developing the characteristics of the final phase. One cannot help but feel that the English builders' partiality for exuberant decoration had something to do with the making of such towers as St. Michel and the Pey Berland. The landscape round Bordeaux is as rich in sky-pointing spires as Calvados in Normandy.

When, in 1451, the English surrendered Bordeaux, the great Dunois, Jeanne d'Arc's companion in arms, was received as conqueror in its cathedral (where in 1376 the Black Prince had accepted the citizens'

oath of fealty to his father), and to the ringing of bells and cries of "_Noel_," Archbishop Pierre Berland and the chief men of the town swore to be loyal subjects of France.

Among the ancient churches of historic interest in Bordeaux is Ste.

Croix, rebuilt by Charlemagne when Saracens destroyed it, and again remade (1099) as Romanesque according to the school of Poitou. Under its tower, Gothic ribs were used early in the XII century. The church was partly wrecked in 1179 and revaulted at the end of the XIII century. In the sculpture of the rich facade is a certain a.s.syrian note. M. Brutails complains that Abadie, the restorer, made of the frontispiece a neo-Angoumois work and that the north tower is entirely of his building.

Memories of the great Emperor Charles haunt the former cathedral of Bordeaux, St. Seurin. Fundamentally it belongs to the cupola type of edifice, and though incessantly rebuilt up to the XV century, it presents the aspect of a Romanesque church. The south portal (c. 1260), sculptured with elaborate foliate ornament, has images of unequal merit.

In St. Seurin, says tradition, Charlemagne paused, in 778, with the bodies of the heroes of Roncevaux to be buried at Blaye, his nephew Roland and that paladin's comrade, Sire Olivier, and Archbishop Turpin of Rheims, who fought pagans--_par granz batailles et par mult bels sermuns_. On the altar of St. Seurin the emperor laid the horn that Roland blew in his last extremity, the olifant which the Midi folk say still echoes in the Pyrenean gorges:

Vient a Burdele la citet de valur, Desur l'alter seint Sevrin li barun Met l'olifant, plein d'or et de manguns, Li pelerin le veient ki la vunt.[222]

(Came to Bordeaux the city of great price, And on the shrine of Baron St. Seurin, The olifant Charles laid, filled full with gold, And to this day pilgrims can see it there.)

The XX-century pilgrims to the old city on the Garonne must remember that the _Chanson de Roland_ was written a long, long time ago, and that to-day the olifant of the paladin lives only in the pages of French history, where its place is as secure as the standard of Jeanne d'Arc.

_a la peine, a l'honneur._ Without St. Seurin's church we might have forgotten a proud page of Bordeaux' past.

TOULOUSE[223]

Ici, dans Toulouse, je sens palpiter La prodigieuse histoire du libre Languedoc!

Et je vois Saint-Sernin, la grande eglise romane, ...

Et le rempart ou la pierre ecrasa l'oiseau de Proie que je ne veux pas nommer....

a Toulouse vivante, a Toulouse qui chante, J'eleve mon salut et je dis: Ville sainte!

Au soleil a jamais epanouis-toi puissante!...

L'ame du Midi refugiee en toi, Chevaleresque et digne, tu as traverse les ages!