The Cathedrals Of Southern France Part 12

These firstlings of the season are tended with great pride. The distinctive "rose of Provence" is smaller, redder, and more elastic and concentric than the _centifoliae_ of the north, and for this reason, likely, it appears the more charming to the eye of the native of the north, who, if we are to believe the romanticists, is made a child again by the mere contemplation of this lovely flower.

The glory of this rich red "Provence rose" is in dispute between Provence and Provins, the ancient capital of La Brie; but the weight of the argument appears to favour the former.

Below Arles and Nimes the Rhone broadens out into a many-fingered estuary, and mingles its Alpine flood with the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

The delta has been formed by the activity and energy of the river itself, from the fourth century--when it is known that Arles lay sixteen miles from the sea--till to-day, when it is something like thirty. This ceaseless carrying and filling has resulted in a new coast-line, which not only has changed the topography of the region considerably, but may be supposed to have actually worked to the commercial disadvantage of the country round about.

The annual prolongation of the sh.o.r.es--the reclaimed water-front--is about one hundred and sixty-four feet, hence some considerable gain is accounted for, but whether to the nation or the "squatter" statistics do not say.

The delta of the Rhone has been described by an expansive French writer as: "Something quite separate from the rest of France. It is a wedge of Greece and of the East thrust into Gaul. It came north a hundred (or more) years ago and killed the Monarchy. It caught the value in, and created the great war-song of the Republic."

There is a deal of subtlety in these few lines, and they are given here because of their truth and applicability.

II

ST. ETIENNE DE CHALONS-SUR-SAoNE

"The cathedral at Chalons," says Philip Gilbert Hamerton,--who knew the entire region of the Saone better perhaps than any other Anglo-Saxon,--"has twin towers, which, in the evening, at a distance, recall Notre Dame (at Paris), and there are domes, too, as in the capital."

An imaginative description surely, and one that is doubtless not without truth were one able to first come upon this riverside city of mid-France in the twilight, and by boat from the upper river.

Chalons is an ideally situated city, with a placidness which the slow current of the Saone does not disturb. But its cathedral! It is no more like its Parisian compeer than it is like the Pyramids of Egypt.

In the first place, the cathedral towers are a weak, effeminate imitation of a prototype which itself must have been far removed from Notre Dame, and they have been bolstered and battened in a shameful fashion.

The cathedral at Chalons is about the most ancient-looking possession of the city, which in other respects is quite modern, and, aside from its charming situation and general attractiveness, takes no rank whatever as a centre of ancient or mediaeval art.

Its examples of Gallic architecture are not traceable to-day, and of Roman remains it possesses none. As a Gallic stronghold,--it was never more than that,--it appealed to Caesar merely as a base from which to advance or retreat, and its history at this time is not great or abundant.

A Roman wall is supposed to have existed, but its remains are not traceable to-day, though tradition has it that a quant.i.ty of its stones were transported by the monk Benigne for the rotunda which he built at Dijon.

The city's era of great prosperity was the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when its fortifications were built up anew, its cathedral finished, and fourteen churches held forth.

From this high estate it has sadly fallen, and there is only its decrepit cathedral, rebuilt after a seventeenth-century fire, and two churches--one of them modern--to uphold its ecclesiastical dignity.

The towers of the cathedral are of the seventeenth century, but the so-called "Deanery Tower" is more ancient, and suggestive of much that is militant and very little that is churchly.

The interior has been restored, not wholly with success, but yet not wholly spoiled.

In plan and arrangement it is a simple and severe church, but acceptable enough when one contemplates changes made elsewhere. Here are to be seen no debased copies of Greek or Roman orders; which is something to be thankful for.

The arches of the nave and choir are strong and bold, but not of great spread. The height of the nave, part of which has come down from the thirteenth century, is ninety feet at least.

There are well-carved capitals to the pillars of the nave, and the coloured gla.s.s of the windows of triforium and clerestory is rich without rising to great beauty.

In general the style is decidedly a _melange_, though the cathedral is ent.i.tled to rank as a Gothic example. Its length is 350 feet.

The _maitre-autel_ is one of the most elegant in France.

Modern improvement has cleared away much that was picturesque, but around the cathedral are still left a few gabled houses, which serve to preserve something of the mediaeval setting which once held it.

The courtyard and its dependencies at the base of the "Deanery Tower"

are the chief artistic features. They appeal far more strongly than any general accessory of the cathedral itself, and suggest that they once must have been the components of a cloister.

The see was founded in the fifth century as a suffragan of Lyon.

III

ST. VINCENT DE MACON

The _Mastieo_ of the Romans was not the Macon of to-day, though, by evolution, or corruption, or whatever the process may have been, the name has come down to us as referring to the same place. The former city did not border the river, but was seated on a height overlooking the Saone, which flows by the doors of the present city of Macon.

Its site is endowed with most of the attributes included in the definition of "commanding," and, though not grandly situated, is, from any riverside view-point, attractive and pleasing.

When it comes to the polygonal towers of its olden cathedral, this charming and pleasing view changes to that of one which is curious and interesting. The cathedral of St. Vincent is a battered old ruin, and no amount of restoration and rebuilding will ever endow it with any more deserving qualities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. VINCENT _de MACON_.]

The Revolution was responsible for its having withered away, as it was also for the abolishment of the see of Macon.

The towers stand to-day--lowered somewhat from their former proportions--gaunt and grim, and the rich Burgundian narthen, which lay between, has been converted--not restored, mark you--into an inferior sort of chapel.

The destruction that fell upon various parts of this old church might as well have been more sweeping and razed it to the ground entirely. The effect could not have been more disheartening.

Macon formerly had twelve churches. Now it has three--if we include this poor fragment of its one-time cathedral. Between the Revolution and the coronation of Napoleon I. the city was possessed of no place of worship.

Macon became an episcopal see, with Placide as its first bishop, in the sixth century. It was suppressed in 1790.

The bridge which crosses the river to the suburb of St. Laurent is credited as being the finest work of its kind crossing the Saone.

Hamerton has said that "its ma.s.sive arches and piers, wedge-shaped to meet the wind, are pleasant to contemplate after numerous festoons of wire carrying a roadway of planks." This bridge was formerly surmounted, at either end, with a castellated gateway, but, like many of these accessories elsewhere, they have disappeared.

The famous bridge at Cahors (shown elsewhere in this book) is the best example of such a bridge still existing in France.

As a "cathedral city," Macon will not take a high rank. The "great man"

of Macon was Lamartine. His birthplace is shown to visitors, but its present appearance does not suggest the splendid appointments of its description in that worthy's memoirs.

Macon is the _entrepot_ of the abundant and excellent _vin du Bourgogne_, and the strictly popular repute of the city rests entirely on this fact.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. JEAN _de LYON_.]