The Cathedrals Of Southern France Part 1

The Cathedrals of Southern France.

by Francis Miltoun.

INTRODUCTION

Too often--it is a half-acknowledged delusion, however--one meets with what appears to be a theory: that a book of travel must necessarily be a series of dull, discursive, and entirely uncorroborated opinions of one who may not be even an intelligent observer. This is mere intellectual pretence. Even a humble author--so long as he be an honest one--may well be allowed to claim with Mr. Howells the right to be serious, or the reverse, "with his material as he finds it;" and that "something personally experienced can only be realized on the spot where it was lived." This, says he, is "the prime use of travel, and the attempt to create the reader a partner in the enterprise" ... must be the excuse, then, for putting one's observations on paper.

He rightly says, too, that nothing of perilous adventure is to-day any more like to happen "in Florence than in Fitchburg."

A "literary tour," a "cathedral tour," or an "architectural tour,"

requires a formula wherein the author must be wary of making questionable estimates; but he may, with regard to generalities,--or details, for that matter,--state his opinion plainly; but he should state also his reasons. With respect to church architecture no average reader, any more than the average observer, willingly enters the arena of intellectual combat, but rather is satisfied--as he should be, unless he is a Freeman, a Gonse, or a Corroyer--with an ampler radius which shall command even a juster, though no less truthful, view.

Not from one book or from ten, in one year or a score can this be had.

The field is vast and the immensity of it all only dawns upon one the deeper he gets into his subject. A dictionary of architecture, a compendium or gazetteer of geography, or even the unwieldy ma.s.s of fact tightly held in the fastnesses of the Encyclopaedia Britannica will not tell one--in either a long or a short while--all the facts concerning the cathedrals of France.

Some will consider that in this book are made many apparently trifling a.s.sertions; but it is claimed that they are pertinent and again are expressive of an emotion which mayhap always arises of the same mood.

Notre Dame at Rodez is a "warm, mouse-coloured cathedral;" St. Cecile d'Albi is at once "a fortress and a church," and the once royal city of Aigues-Mortes is to-day but "a shelter for a few hundred pallid, shaking mortals."

Such expressions are figurative, but, so far as words can put it, they are the concentrated result of observation.

These observations do not aspire to be considered "improving," though it is a.s.serted that they are informative.

Description of all kinds is an art which requires considerable forethought in order to be even readable. And of all subjects, art and architecture are perhaps the most difficult to treat in a manner which shall not arouse an intolerant criticism.

Perhaps some credit will be attained for the attempts herein made to present in a pleasing manner many of the charms of the ecclesiastical architecture of southern France, where a more elaborate and erudite work would fail of its object. As Lady Montagu has said in her "Letters,"--"We travellers are in very hard circ.u.mstances. If we say nothing new, we are dull, and have observed nothing. If we tell any new thing, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic."

This book is intended as a contribution to travel literature--or, if the reader like, to that special cla.s.s of book which appeals largely to the traveller.

Most lovers of art and literature are lovers of churches; indeed, the world is yearly containing more and more of this cla.s.s. The art expression of a people, of France in particular, has most often first found its outlet in church-building and decoration. Some other countries have degenerated sadly from the idea.

In recent times the Anglo-Saxon has mostly built his churches,--on what he is pleased to think are "improved lines,"--that, more than anything else, resemble, in their interiors, playhouses, and in their exteriors, cotton factories and breweries.

This seemingly bitter view is advanced simply because the writer believes that it is the church-members, using the term in its broad sense, who are responsible for the many outrageously unseemly church-buildings which are yearly being erected; not the architects--who have failings enough of their own to answer for.

It is said that a certain great architect of recent times was responsible for more bad architecture than any man who had lived before or since. Not because he produced such himself, but because his feeble imitators, without his knowledge, his training, or his ambition, not only sought to follow in his footsteps, but remained a long way in the rear, and stumbled by the way.

This man built churches. He built one, Trinity Church, in Boston, U. S.

A., which will remain, as long as its stones endure, an entirely successful transplantation of an exotic from another land. In London a new Roman Catholic cathedral has recently been erected after the Byzantine manner, and so unexpectedly successful was it in plan and execution that its author was "medalled" by the Royal Academy; whatever that dubious honour may be worth.

Both these great men are dead, and aside from these two great examples, and possibly the Roman Catholic cathedral, and the yet unachieved cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York City, where, in an English-speaking land, has there been built, in recent times, a religious edifice of the first rank worthy to be cla.s.sed with these two old-world and new-world examples?

They do these things better in France: Viollet-le-Duc completed St. Ouen at Rouen and the cathedral at Clermont-Ferrand, in most acceptable manner. So, too, was the treatment of the cathedral at Moulins-sur-Allier--although none of these examples are among the n.o.blest or the most magnificent in France. They have, however, been completed successfully, and in the true spirit of the original.

To know the shops and boulevards of Paris does not necessarily presume a knowledge of France. This point is mentioned here from the fact that many have claimed a familiarity with the cathedrals of France; when to all practical purposes, they might as well have begun and ended with the observation that Notre Dame de Paris stands on an island in the middle of the Seine.

The author would not carp at the critics of the first volume of this series, which appeared last season. Far from it. They were, almost without exception, most generous. At least they granted, _unqualifiedly_, the reason for being for the volume which was put forth bearing the t.i.tle: "Cathedrals of Northern France."

The seeming magnitude of the undertaking first came upon the author and artist while preparing the first volume for the press. This was made the more apparent when, on a certain occasion, just previous to the appearance of the book, the author made mention thereof to a friend who _did_ know Paris--better perhaps than most English or American writers; at least he ought to have known it better.

When this friend heard of the inception of this book on French cathedrals, he marvelled at the fact that there should be a demand for such; said that the subject had already been overdone; and much more of the same sort; and that only yesterday a certain Miss---- had sent him an "author's copy" of a book which recounted the results of a journey which she and her mother had recently made in what she sentimentally called "Romantic Touraine."

Therein were treated at least a good half-dozen cathedrals; which, supplementing the always useful Baedeker or Joanne, and a handbook of Notre Dame at Paris and another of Rouen, covered--thought the author's friend at least--quite a representative share of the cathedrals of France.

This only substantiates the contention made in the foreword to the first volume: that there were doubtless many with a true appreciation and love for great churches who would be glad to know more of them, and have the ways--if not the means--smoothed in order to make a visit thereto the more simplified and agreeable. Too often--the preface continued--the tourist, alone or personally conducted in droves, was whirled rapidly onward by express-train to some more popularly or fashionably famous spot, where, for a previously stipulated sum, he might partake of a more lurid series of amus.e.m.e.nts than a mere dull round of churches.

"Cities, like individuals, have," says Arthur Symons, "a personality and individuality quite like human beings."

This is undoubtedly true of churches as well, and the sympathetic observer--the enthusiastic lover of churches for their peculiarities, none the less than their general excellencies--is the only person who will derive the maximum amount of pleasure and profit from an intimacy therewith.

Whether a great church is interesting because of its antiquity, its history, or its artistic beauties matters little to the enthusiast. He will drink his fill of what offers. Occasionally, he will find a combination of two--or possibly all--of these ingredients; when his joy will be great.

Herein are catalogued as many of the attributes of the cathedrals of the south of France--and the records of religious or civil life which have surrounded them in the past--as s.p.a.ce and opportunity for observation have permitted.

More the most sanguine and capable of authors could not promise, and while in no sense does the volume presume to supply exhaustive information, it is claimed that all of the churches included within the cla.s.sification of cathedrals--those of the present and those of a past day--are to be found mentioned herein, the chief facts of their history recorded, and their notable features catalogued.

_PART I_

_Southern France in General_

I

THE CHARM OF SOUTHERN FRANCE

The charm of southern France is such as to compel most writers thereon to become discursive. It could not well be otherwise. Many things go to make up pictures of travel, which the most polished writer could not ignore unless he confined himself to narrative pure and simple; as did Sterne.

One who seeks knowledge of the architecture of southern France should perforce know something of the life of town and country in addition to a specific knowledge of, or an immeasurable enthusiasm for, the subject.

Few have given Robert Louis Stevenson any great preeminence as a writer of topographical description; perhaps not all have admitted his ability as an una.s.sailable critic; but the fact is, there is no writer to whom the lover of France can turn with more pleasure and profit than Stevenson.

There is a wealth of description of the country-side of France in the account of his romantic travels on donkey-back, or, as he whimsically puts it, "beside a donkey," and his venturesome though not dangerous "Inland Voyage." These early volumes of Stevenson, while doubtless well known to lovers of his works, are closed books to most casual travellers. The author and artist of this book here humbly acknowledge an indebtedness which might not otherwise be possible to repay.

Stevenson was devout, he wrote sympathetically of churches, of cathedrals, of monasteries, and of religion. What his predilections were as to creed is not so certain. Sterne was more worldly, but he wrote equally attractive prose concerning many things which English-speaking people have come to know more of since his time. Arthur Young, "an agriculturist," as he has been rather contemptuously called, a century or more ago wrote of rural France after a manner, and with a profuseness, which few have since equalled. His creed, likewise, appears to be unknown; in that, seldom, if ever, did he mention churches, and not at any time did he discuss religion.

In a later day Miss M. E. B. Edwards, an English lady who knows France as few of her countrywomen do, wrote of many things more or less allied with religion, which the ordinary "travel books" ignored--much to their loss--altogether.

Still more recently another English lady, Madam Marie Duclaux,--though her name would not appear to indicate her nationality,--has written a most charming series of observations on her adopted land; wherein the peasant, his religion, and his aims in life are dealt with more understandingly than were perhaps possible, had the author not been possessed of a long residence among them.

Henry James, of all latter-day writers, has given us perhaps the most illuminating accounts of the architectural joy of great churches, chateaux and cathedrals. Certainly his work is marvellously appreciative, and his "Little Tour in France," with the two books of Stevenson before mentioned, Sterne's "Sentimental Journey,"--and Mr.