The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine Part 24

XXVI

THE CHURCHES OF COLOGNE

The popular interest in Cologne, the ancient _Colonia Agrippina_ of the Romans, and the romantic incidents connected with it, are so great that one might devote a large volume to the city, and then the half of its legend and history would not have been told.

Cologne is one of the most ancient cities of Germany. It takes its place beside Treves and Mayence as one of the earliest seats of Christianity; but the actual date of the establishment of the church in Cologne is lost in obscurity.

There were undoubtedly persons professing the Christian faith in the colony in the third century, and toward the year 312 the Emperor Constantine, having embraced the faith himself, gave his protection to its adherents throughout his colonies.

The church of St. Peter at Cologne contains a painting presented to it by Rubens in memory of the fact that he was baptized before the altar of this church. Of this picture, a "Crucifixion of St. Peter," Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote:

"It was painted a little time before Rubens's death. The body and head of the saint are the only good parts in this picture, which, however, is finely coloured and well drawn; but the figure bends too suddenly from the thighs, which are ill drawn, or, rather, in a bad taste of drawing; as is likewise his arm, which has a short interrupted outline. The action of the malefactors has not that energy which he usually gave to his figures. Rubens, in his letters to Gildorp, expresses his own approbation of this picture, which he says was the best he ever painted; he likewise expresses his content and happiness in the subject, as being picturesque; this is likewise natural to such a mind as that of Rubens, who was perhaps too much looking about him for the picturesque, or something uncommon. A man with his head downwards is certainly a more extraordinary object than if the head were in its natural place. Many parts of this picture are so feebly drawn, and with so tame a pencil, that I cannot help suspecting that Rubens died before he had completed it, and that it was finished by some of his scholars."

St. Maria in Capitola, one of Cologne's famous churches, stands on the site of the ancient capital of the Romans. It is one of the most perfect examples extant of a triapsed church, though the three apses themselves are supposed to have been an afterthought added in the twelfth century, whereas the nave dates from the century before. The nave, too, has an interpolation or addition to its original form in that a Gothic roof was added some three hundred years after it had first been covered with a plain wooden ceiling.

The three apses unfold grandly, with the high altar in the most easterly or middle termination.

The general effect of the interior is decidedly high coloured, with much polychromatic decoration and painted gla.s.s. In the Hardenrath chapel are found the most striking of these mural decorations, which are interesting as ill.u.s.trating a certain phase of art, if not for their supreme excellence.

St. Pantaleon's claims to be the most ancient church in the city, dating as far back as A. D. 980, when it was reared from the stones of the Roman bridge which before that time stretched across to Deutz. The chapel of the _Minorites_ contains the tomb of Duns Scotus, and a horrible tale is told of his entombment alive, of his revival in his coffin, his struggle to escape, and his body being found afterward at the closed door of the sepulchre, with the hand eaten off by himself ere he died of hunger.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FONT. S. MARTIN. COLOGNE.]

A peculiarity of Cologne's churches--for it is possessed by the Apostles' Church, St. Cunibert's, and St. Andrew's--is the western apse.

Such a member is not unique to Cologne, for it exists in the cathedral at Nevers, in France, and there are yet other examples in Germany; but its use is sufficiently uncommon to warrant speculation as to its purpose.

The Apostles' Church has this feature most highly developed. The edifice is a n.o.ble pile dating from early in the eleventh century, but reconstructed two centuries later, to which period it really belongs so far as its general characteristics are concerned.

Not all the church architecture of Cologne is Gothic; indeed the churches of the Apostles and St. Martin each show the Lombard influence to a marked degree. The three apses, and their round arches and galleries, are like a bit of Italy transported northward.

St. Maria in Capitola, founded by the wife of Pepin, has the same characteristics, while St. Martin has the outline of quite the ideal Romanesque church. Its great tower, which fills the square between the apses, is certainly one of the most beautiful to be seen on a long round of European travel. This tower must date from the latter years of the twelfth century, and yet, although of a period contemporary with the Gothic of Notre Dame de Paris, it is so thoroughly Romanesque that one wonders that, in Cologne at least, the style ever died out as it did when the great Gothic cathedral was conceived.

St. Andrews is another triapsed church, and is considered one of the best and most elaborately designed fabrics of the Romanesque type on the Rhine, particularly in respect to its central tower, the nave, and the west transept.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROSS St. MARTIN COLOGNE]

There has been much late Gothic rebuilding, but the chief characteristics of the earlier period distinctly predominated. The apses are polygonal, but it is thought that they may, in earlier times, have been semicircular like St. Martin's, St. Mary's, and the Apostles'

Churches.

St. Gereon's is an octagonal church similar to that of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle. Even more than the latter it has been altered, rebuilt, and added to, but the original outline is still readily traced in spite of the fact that its foundations may have come down from the fifth century. It is more difficult, however, to follow its evolution in detail than it is in the case of Charlemagne's shrine at Aix-la-Chapelle.

The style is distinctly Rhenish, though not alone in Germany do such round churches exist; one recalls the Templars' Church in London and the famous example at Ravenna in Italy.

The great decagon of St. Gereon's is covered with a domed roof, also divided into ten sections by groins or ribs, which rise gracefully from the slender shafts at the angles, meeting at the apex in a boss.

The ancient collegiate buildings which formerly surrounded St. Gereon's have disappeared, but there is yet an extensive structure of a more modern date which enfolds the central pile. The easterly apse is low and rectangular, while the facade of the west is flanked by two Romanesque unspired towers.

St. Gereon's is one of the most curiously constructed churches of the middle ages. It was founded by the Empress Helene in honour of the Theban martyrs, who, to the number of three hundred and ninety-five, died for their faith, with their captains, Gereon and Gregory, toward the end of the third century, in the reign of the Emperor Diocletian.

One enters by a rectangular porch, where are disposed some fragments of Roman remains. The rotunda, or decagon, so reminiscent of Aix-la-Chapelle, dates from a period contemporary therewith, so far as its lower walls are concerned, but the upper portions are of the twelfth century, at least.

Below the arches are the chapels which surround the decagon in symmetrical fashion. Above is the organ and the adjoining choir walls. In the latter are walled up innumerable skulls of the companions of St. Gereon, and in each of the chapels is a great sarcophagus, also containing the bones of the martyrs. Altogether the thought which arises is not a pleasant one, no matter how worthy the object of preserving such a vast quant.i.ty of human remains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. GeReON'S, _COLOGNE_]

The high altar is quite isolated, and the pavement of the choir itself, which is aisleless, rises behind it to a height of a dozen or more steps,--a frequent occurrence in the Rhine churches.

The apse has an insertion of Gothic windows, but the eleventh-century Romanesque features are still prominent.

In the choir are a series of flamboyant Gothic stalls, above which are monumental tablets let into the wall.

At the entrance of the choir are two colossal statues of the martyred saints, then seven others, behind which, at the base of the apside, is another altar.

The tapestries which surround the choir are of the "_haut-lisse_"

weaving, and represent the life history of Joseph.

Beneath the choir is a vast, antique crypt, which contains yet other sarcophagi filled, presumably, with human bones. The pavement is composed of fragments of antique mosaic.

The Jesuit church at Cologne is one of the few Renaissance examples on the Rhine. It is, however, most unchurchly, when judged by French standards.

Certainly this German example is highly beautiful both in design and execution; but it is not churchly, and its great cylindrical columns, strung together by a gallery, give the appearance of a foyer in an opera-house or of a modern railway-station, rather than that of a place of worship.

It is all nave; there are no transepts, and there is no choir properly speaking, but merely a chancel, not very deep and again very unchurchly, with two ugly lights on either side, and a sort of paG.o.da-like screen which is decidedly theatrical. The carving of the pulpit and the disposition of all the decoration is extremely bizarre, but undeniably excellent in execution.

Cologne is an archbishopric which has for suffragan sees, Treves, Munster, and Paderborn.

The abbeys and churches which were erected in Cologne, when the archbishop first took up his residence there in the latter part of the eighth century, were numerous and exceedingly rich in endowment. So much was this so that Cologne was given the name of the "Holy City of the north."

The Jews of Cologne were a numerous body, but a decree of 1425 drove them all from the city. In 1618 a new decree likewise expelled the Protestants. Time regulated all this, but in those days Cologne clung proudly to the position which she had attained as a champion of the orthodox religion.

In all, there were two abbeys, two collegiate churches, the cathedral, forty-nine chapels, thirty-nine monasteries, two convents for women, and many commanderies of the Teutonic order and the Order of Malta.

Near Cologne is the fine old Cistercian abbey of Altenburg. It contains some very ancient coloured gla.s.s, perhaps the most beautiful of its era extant, for it is thought to date from between 1270 and 1300, when the art first attained any great excellence.

That which remains to-day shows foliage and diaper in great variety, with no figures whatever, this being a distinct tenet of the Cistercian builders, who, in the severity of their rule, frowned down all decorative effects that bordered upon the frivolous.

These windows at Altenburg, being the best examples of their kind, are the distinct artistic attraction of the great abbey, which is a dozen or more miles distant from Cologne.

The choir was commenced in 1255 and completed almost immediately; but the entire main fabric was not finished until well on in the century following.

[Ill.u.s.tration]