The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine Part 28

_Neuss_

There is not much about the compact, though rather ungainly, little city of Neuss to interest any but the lover of churches, though its history is very ancient, and the development of its patronymic through _Novesium_, _Niusa_, and _Nova Castra_ bespeaks volumes for the part it has played in the past.

Its origin dates back to the time of Drusus, and it is mentioned by Tacitus as the winter quarters of the Roman Army. The city was ravaged by Attila in 451, and by the Normans in the ninth century. Emperor Philip of Suabia captured it in 1206, and gave it to the Archbishop of Cologne. A chapter of n.o.bles was founded here in 825, and Count Evrard of Cleves and Bertha, his wife, erected, in the first years of the thirteenth century, its princ.i.p.al church dedicated to St. Quirinus.

This church stands to-day, with its great square tower looming bulkily over the house-tops, and is reckoned as the prototype of many similar structures elsewhere. It has the almost perfect disposition and development of the double apse so frequently met with in German churches.

In general, its architecture is of a heavy order, and the whole structure is grim, though by no means gaunt nor cold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEUSS]

St. Quirinus is of the epoch when the Romanesque was being replaced nearly everywhere by the new-coming Gothic.

In spite of this, its style is, curiously enough, neither one nor the other, nor is it transition, though the pointed arch has crept in and often eliminated the Romanesque attributes of the round-arch style round about. It is manifestly not transition, because there was no transition here from Romanesque to Gothic. It remained palpably Romanesque in spite of Gothic interpolations.

In the windows one can but remark the indecision which prompted the builders to fashion them in such extraordinary squat shapes, and they certainly serve their purpose of lighting the interior very badly.

The nave and aisles of St. Quirinus are ample, and its s.p.a.cious _mannerch.o.r.e_ in the triforium is like all its fellows in the German churches, an adjunct which adds to the general effect of size.

The church dates from 1209, the period when the Gothic influence was not only making itself felt over the border, in the domain of France and Burgundy, but was already extending its influence elsewhere. But here, westward even of the borders of the Rhine, the round arch lingered on, to the exclusion of any very marked Gothic tendency.

There is an inscription in stone on the south wall of the church which places the date of its erection beyond all doubt. It reads thus:

ANNO . INCARNA.

DNI . MC.C.V.I.I.I.I.

PMO . IPERII . AN NO . OTTONIS . A DOLFO . COLON

EPO . SOPHIA . A BBA . MAGISTER WOLBERO . PO SUIT . PMU . LAP

IDE . FUNDAME NTI . HUI . TEM PLI . I . DIE . SCI . DI ONISII . MAR.

When a former Count of Cleves founded the primitive church here in the ninth century, it was a collegiate church attached to the abbey of which the mother superior was the Abbess Sophia, presumably the same referred to in the above inscription. The abbey itself was destroyed in 1199 during a civil warfare.

Though not really a ma.s.sive structure, the church of St. Quirinus is, in every particular, of a strength and solidity which rank it as a masterwork of its age. There is nothing weak and attenuated about it, and its transepts and apses make up in general effect what it lacks in actual area.

The facade is imposing, though decidedly bizarre when compared with the simple flowing lines of Gothic; but, on the whole, the effect is one of a certain grandeur.

The aisles are astonishingly tall when compared with the nave.

There are various meetings of round-arched windows and arcades with those of a pointed nature, but there is not the slightest evidence of a development or transition from one to the other, hence the Gothic strain may be said not to exist.

The general effect of the exterior is polychromatic, which is not according to the best conceptions of ecclesiastical decorations in architecture. A twilight or a moonlight view, however, tones it all down in a manner that makes the fabric appear quite the most imposing church of its size that one may find in these parts.

The great central tower, reminiscent enough of the parish church in England, but not so frequent in Germany, and still less so in France, forms a great lantern which rises over the crossing in a marvellous and exceedingly practical manner, in that it affords about the only adequate means of admitting light into the interior.

The triforium of the nave is the chief interior feature to be remarked, and is most s.p.a.ciously planned. It forms the _mannerch.o.r.e_ before mentioned.

The clerestory windows are decidedly Rhenish in character, resembling, says one antiquary, who is a humourist if nothing else, an ace of clubs.

At any rate, it is a most unusual and inefficient manner of lighting a great church. These windows are practically trefoils of most unsymmetrical proportions, and are in every way unlovely.

The choir is raised on a platform, beneath which is the crypt. Three flights of steps lead to this platform, which gives it a far more grand appearance than its actual dimensions would otherwise allow.

The choir-stalls are of the fourteenth century, and are the only mediaeval furnishings to be seen in the church to-day.

The apses contain only moderately effective gla.s.s.

The frescoes in the cupola of St. Quirinus, which are the work of Cornelius of Dusseldorf (about 1811), are most interesting, and are among the most successful of the great number of modern works of their kind to be seen in Germany.

_Munchen-Gladbach_

Munchen-Gladbach is one of those "snug" little German towns that one comes across now and then when wandering along off the beaten track. Its streets are trim and clean, and its houses likewise, with a brilliancy of fresh paint which is consistently and proverbially Dutch. Beneath one's foot is a sea of cobblestones all worn to a smoothness which argues the tramp of countless hordes of feet over centuries of time, if paving-stones have really been invented so long. With all its air of prosperity and providence, Munchen-Gladbach is not a highly interesting town in which to linger.

Its name is compounded of its prefix, meaning _monk's_, with its original patronymic, Gladbach. The monks of Gladbach were a part of the establishment which founded the minster church of Gladbach, an old abbey or monastic edifice which stands to-day, a great transeptless thirteenth-century structure with an elevated choir reached from the nave by two flights of ten or a dozen steps.

The crypt is entered from between these two flights of steps, and forms all that is left to mark the primitive church.

The round-arched style and Gothic, of a sort, intermingle in the nave in bewildering fashion until one wonders in what cla.s.sification it really belongs. The openings from the aisles to the nave are pointed, while above is an unpierced triforium with a clerestory of round-headed arches.

In the aisles are what Jacobean architects called fanlights, a series of peculiarly shaped openings like an oddly shaped fan. They are distinctly Rhenish; indeed they are not acknowledged to be found elsewhere, and hence may be considered as one of the chief points of distinction of this otherwise not remarkably appealing church.

There are no aisles in the choir, which dates from the thirteenth century and terminates with a multi-sided apse pierced by long lancet windows.

The Stadt Kirche of Gladbach, or the parish church as it properly takes rank, is still a Catholic edifice and shows the advantage of having been kept in active use. There is nothing musty or moss-grown about it, but in every way it is as warmly appealing as the monks' church is coldly unattractive.

There is no marked choir termination, its great aisles extending completely to the rear with just a suspicion of a rudimentary pentagonal apse to suggest the easterly end. This is a common enough arrangement in German churches, which more frequently than not, in the fourteenth century, the date of this structure, possessed nothing but a squared-off east end, after the English manner of building.

At the westerly end is a well-planned tower distinctly Rhenish--if it were not it would be thought heavy--and where the choir is supposed to join the nave the roof is surmounted by a tiny spire, which, in truth, is no addition of beauty.

The interior shows great height, and, if of no great architectural splendour, has enough mural embellishment and attractive gla.s.s to stamp it as a livable and lovable edifice for religious worship, which is a good deal more than most modern church buildings ever acquire.

The six bays of the nave show pointed arches springing from rounded columns. There is an arcaded triforium, and an elaborate series of clerestory windows which show the geometrical and flamboyant Gothic in its perfection.

The apse is lighted with five windows of great height. The gla.s.s is a mixture of colour and monotone, but the effect is undeniably good.

The chancel is so shallow that the choir flows over, as it were, into one bay of the nave, while the choir-stalls themselves are placed in the aisles. Certainly a most unusual, and perhaps a unique, arrangement.

An altar fronts the west end of either range of stalls, and back, at the easterly end of the aisles, is found another altar.

The high altar has a handsome modern screen in the form of a gilt triptych, which is singularly effective and imposing.

Beneath the tower, at the westerly end, is the baptistery, entrance to which from the body of the church is gained through a low, pointed arch.

[Ill.u.s.tration]