The Cathedrals Of Southern France Part 40

A series of badly arched lancets in the choir are ungraceful and not in keeping with the other constructive details. The delicately sculptured and foliaged screen or _jube_ at the crossing is a late fifteenth-century work.

In one of the chapels is now to be seen, in mutilated fragments, the ancient sixteenth-century _cloture du choeur_. It was a remarkable and elaborate work of _bizarre_ stone-carving, which to-day has been reconstructed in some measure approaching its former completeness by the use of still other fragments taken from the episcopal palace. The chief feature as to completeness and perfection is the doorway, which bears two lengthy inscriptions in Latin. The facing of the _cloture_ throughout is covered with a range of pilasters in Arabesque, but the niches between are to-day bare of their statues, if they ever really possessed them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Choir-stalls, Rodez_]

The choir-stalls and bishop's throne in carved wood are excellent, as also an elaborately carved wooden _grille_ of a mixed Arabesque and Gothic design.

There are four other chapel or alcove screens very nearly as elaborate; all of which features, taken in conjunction one with the other, form an extensive series of embellishments such as is seldom met with.

Two fourteenth-century monuments to former prelates are situated in adjoining chapels, and a still more luxurious work of the same period--the tomb of Gilbert de Cantobre--is beneath an extensive altar which has supposedly Byzantine ornament of the tenth century.

Rodez was the seat of a bishop (St. Amand) as early as the fifth century.

Then, as now, the diocese was a suffragan of Albi, whose first bishop, St. Clair, came to the mother-see in the century previous.

XX

STE. CeCILE D'ALBI

The cathedral of Ste. Cecile d'Albi is one of the most interesting, as well as one of the most curious, in all France. It possesses a quality, rare among churches, which gives it at once the aspect of both a church and a fortress.

As the representative of a type, it stands at the very head of the splendid fortress-churches of feudal times. The remarkable disposition of its plan is somewhat reflected in the neighbouring cathedral at Rodez and in the church at Esnades, in the Department of the Charente-Inferieure.

In the severe and aggressive lines of the easterly, or choir, end, it also resembles the famous church of St. Francis at a.s.sisi, and the ruined church of Sainte Sophie at Famagousta in the Island of Cyprus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. CeCILE _d'ALBI_ ...]

It has been likened by the imaginative French--and it needs not so very great a stretch of the imagination, either--to an immense vessel.

Certainly its lines and proportions somewhat approach such a form; as much so as those of Notre Dame de Noyon, which Stevenson likened to an old-time craft with a high p.o.o.p. A less aesthetic comparison has been made with a locomotive of gigantic size, and, truth to tell, it is not unlike that, either, with its advancing tower.

The extreme width of the great nave of this church is nearly ninety feet, and its body is constructed, after an unusual manner, of a warm, rosy-coloured brick. In fact the only considerable portions of the structure not so done are the _cloture_ of the choir, the window-mullions, and the flamboyant Gothic porch of the south side.

By reason of its uncommon constructive elements,--though by no means is it the sole representative of its kind in the south of France,--Ste.

Cecile stands forth as the most considerable edifice of its kind among those which were constructed after this manner of Roman antiquity.

Brickwork of this nature, as is well known, is very enduring, and it therefore makes much for the lasting qualities of a structure so built; much more so, in fact, than the crumbling soft stone which is often used, and which crumbles before the march of time like lead in a furnace.

Ste. Cecile was begun in 1282, on the ruins of the ancient church of St.

Croix. It came to its completion during the latter years of the fourteenth century, when it stood much as it does to-day, grim and strong, but very beautiful.

The only exterior addition of a later time is the before-remarked florid south porch. This _baldaquin_ is very charmingly worked in a light brown stone, and, while flamboyant to an ultra degree, is more graceful in design and execution than most works of a contemporary era which are welded to a stone fabric whose constructive and decorative details are of quite a distinctly different species. In other words, it composes and adds a graceful beauty to the brick fabric of this great church; but likely enough it would offend exceedingly were it brought into juxtaposition with the more slim lines of early Gothic. Its detail here is the very culmination of the height to which Gothic rose before its final debas.e.m.e.nt, and, in its spirited non-contemporaneous admixture with the firmly planted brick walls which form its background, may be reckoned as a _baroque_ in art rather than as a thing _outre_ or misplaced.

In further explanation of the peculiar fortress-like qualities possessed by Ste. Cecile, it may be mentioned here that it was the outcome of a desire for the safety of the church and its adherents which caused it to take this form. It was the direct result of the terrible wars of the Albigenses, and the political and social conditions of the age in which it was built,--the days when the Church was truly militant.

Here, too, to a more impressive extent than elsewhere, if we except the papal palace at Avignon, the episcopal residence as well takes on an aspect which is not far different from that possessed by some of the secular chateaux of feudal times. It closely adjoins the cathedral, which should perhaps dispute this. In reality, however, it does not, and its walls and foundations look far more worldly than they do devout. As to impressiveness, this stronghold of a bishop's palace is thoroughly in keeping with the cathedral itself, and the frowning battlement of its veritable _donjon_ and walls and ramparts suggests a deal more than the mere name by which it is known would justify. Such use as it was previously put to was well served, and the history of the troublous times of the mediaeval ages, when the wars of the Protestants, "the cursed Albigenses," and the natural political and social dissensions, form a chapter around which one could weave much of the history of this majestic cathedral and its walled and fortified environment.

The interior of the cathedral will appeal first of all by its very grand proportions, and next by the curious ill-mannered decorations with which the walls are entirely covered. There is a certain gloom in this interior, induced by the fact that the windows are mere elongated slits in the walls. There are no aisles, no triforium, and no clerestory; nothing but a vast expanse of wall with bizarre decorations and these unusual window piercings. The arrangement of the openings in the tower are even more remarkable--what there are of them, for in truth it is here that the greatest likeness to a fortification is seen. In the lower stages of the tower there are no openings whatever, while above they are practically nothing but loopholes.

The fine choir-screen, in stone, is considered one of the most beautiful and magnificent in France, and to see it is to believe the statement.

The entire _cloture_ of the choir is a wonderful piece of stonework, and the hundred and twenty stalls, which are within its walls, form of themselves an excess of elaboration which perhaps in a more garish light would be oppressive.

The wall-paintings or frescoes are decidedly not beautiful, being for the most part crudely coloured geometrical designs scattered about with no relation one to another. They date from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and are doubtless Italian as to their workmanship, but they betray no great skill on the part of those unknowns who are responsible for them.

The pulpit is an unusually ornate work for a French church, but is hardly beautiful as a work of art. No more is the organ-case, which, as if in keeping with the vast interior, spreads itself over a great extent of wall s.p.a.ce.

Taken all in all, the accessories of the cathedral at Albi, none the less than the unique plan and execution thereof, the south porch, the ma.s.sive tower, the _jube_ and _cloture_ of the choir, the vast un.o.bstructed interior, and the _outre_ wall decorations, place it as one of the most consistently and thoroughly completed edifices of its rank in France. Nothing apparently is wanting, and though possessed of no great wealth of accessory--if one excepts the choir enclosure alone--it is one of those shrines which, by reason of its very individuality, will live long in the memory. It has been said, moreover, to stand alone as to the extensive and complete exemplification of "_l'art decoratif_" in France; that is, as being distinctively French throughout.

The evolution of these component elements took but the comparatively small s.p.a.ce of time covered by two centuries--from the fourteenth to the sixteenth. The culmination resulted in what is still to be seen in all its pristine glory to-day, for Ste. Cecile has not suffered the depredation of many another shrine.

The general plan is distinctly and indigenously French; French to the very core--born of the soil of the _Midi_, and bears no resemblance whatever to any exotic from another land.

With the decorative elements the case may be somewhat qualified. The _baldaquin_--like the choir-screen--more than equals in delicacy and grace the portals of such masterworks as Notre Dame de Rouen, St.

Maclou, or even the cathedral at Troyes, though of less magnitude than any of these examples. On the other hand, it was undoubtedly inspired by northern precept, as also were the ornamental sculptures in wood and stone which are to be seen in the interior.

Albi was a bishopric as early as the fourth century, with St. Clair as its first bishop. At the time the present cathedral was begun it became an archbishopric, and as such it has endured until to-day, with suffragans at Rodez, Cahors, Mende, and Perpignan.

XXI

ST. PIERRE DE MENDE

In the heart of the Gevaudan, Mende is the most picturesque, mountain-locked little city imaginable, with no very remarkable features surrounding it, nor any very grand artificial ones contained within it.

The mountains here, unlike the more fruitful plains of the lower Gevaudan, are covered with snow all of the winter. It is said that the inhabitants of the mountainous upper Gevaudan used to "go into Spain every winter to get a livelihood." Why, it is difficult to understand.

The mountain and valley towns around Mende look no less prosperous than those of Switzerland, though to be sure the inhabitants have never here had, and perhaps never will have, the influx of tourists "to live off of," as in the latter region.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. PIERRE _de MENDE_]

During an invasion of the _Alemanni_ into Gaul, in the third century, the princ.i.p.al city of Gevaudan was plundered and ruined. The bishop, St. Privat, fled into the Cavern of Memate or Mende, whither the Germans followed and killed him.

The holy man was interred in the neighbouring village of Mende, and the veneration which people had for his memory caused them to develop it into a considerable place. Such is the popular legend, at any rate.

The city had no bishop of its own, however, until the middle of the tenth century. Previously the bishops were known as Bishops of Gevaudan.

At last, however, the prelates fixed their seat at Mende, and "great numbers of people resorted thither by reason of the sepulchre of St.

Privat."

By virtue of an agreement with Philippe-le-Bel, in 1306, the bishop became Count of Gevaudan. He claimed also the right of administering the laws and the coining of specie.

Mende is worth visiting for itself alone and for its cathedral. It is difficult to say which will interest the absolute stranger the more.

The spired St. Pierre de Mende is but a fourteenth-century church, with restorations of the seventeenth, but there is a certain grimness and primitiveness about its fabric which would otherwise seem to place it as of a much earlier date.