Kitabı oku: «The Cathedrals of Southern France», sayfa 12
XXX
NOTRE DAME DE VENCE
Vence, – the ancient Roman city of Ventium, – with five other dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Embrun, was suppressed – as the seat of a bishop – in 1790. It had been a suffragan bishopric of Embrun since its foundation by Eusèbe in the fourth century.
The ancient cathedral of Notre Dame is supposed to show traces of workmanship of the sixth, tenth, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries, but, excepting that of the latter era, it will be difficult for the casual observer to place the distinctions of style.
The whole ensemble is of grim appearance; so much so that one need not hesitate to place it well down in the ranks of the church-builder's art, and, either from poverty of purse or purpose, it is quite undistinguished.
In its interior there are a few features of unusual remark: an ancient sarcophagus, called that of St. Véran; a retable of the sixteenth century; some rather good paintings, by artists apparently unknown; and a series of fifty-one fifteenth-century choir-stalls of quite notable excellence, and worth more as an expression of artistic feeling than all the other features combined.
The only distinction as to constructive features is the fact that there are no transepts, and that the aisles which surround the nave are doubled.
XXXI
CATHÉDRALE DE SION
The small city of Sion, the capital of the Valais, looks not unlike the pictures one sees in sixteenth-century historical works.
It is brief, confined, and unobtrusive. It was so in feudal times, when most of its architecture partook of the nature of a stronghold. It is so to-day, because little of modernity has come into its life.
The city, town, or finally village – for it is hardly more, from its great lack of activity – lies at the foot of three lofty, isolated eminences. A great conflagration came to Sion early in the nineteenth century which resulted in a new lay-out of the town and one really fine modern thoroughfare, though be it still remarked its life is yet mediæval.
Upon one of these overshadowing heights is the present episcopal residence, and on another the remains of a fortress – formerly the stronghold of the bishops of Sion. On this height of La Valère stands the very ancient church of Ste. Catherine (with a tenth or eleventh-century choir), occupying, it is said, the site of a Roman temple.
In the mid-nineteenth century the Jesuits gained a considerable influence here and congregated in large numbers.
The city was the ancient Sedanum, and in olden time the bishop bore also the title of "Prince of the Holy Empire." The power of this prelate was practically unlimited, and ordinances of state were, as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century, made in his name, and his arms formed the embellishments of the public buildings and boundary posts.
Rudolf III., king of Burgundy, from the year 1000, made them counts of Valais.
St. Théodule was the first bishop of Sion, – in the fourth century, – and is the patron of the diocese.
In 1070 the bishop of Sion came to England as papal legate to consecrate Walkelin to the see of Winchester.
In 1516 Bishop Schinner came to England to procure financial aid from Henry VIII. to carry on war against France.
The cathedral in the lower town is a fifteenth-century work which ought – had the manner of church-building here in this isolated region kept pace with the outside world – to be Renaissance in style. In reality, it suggests nothing but the earliest of Gothic, and, in parts, even Romanesque; therefore it is to be remarked, if not admired.
Near by is the modern episcopal residence.
The records tell of the extraordinary beauty and value of the trésor, which formerly belonged to the cathedral: an ivory pyx, a reliquary, and a magnificent manuscript of the Gospels – given by Charles the Great to St. Maurice, and acquired by the town in the fourteenth century. This must at some former time have been dispersed, as no trace of it is known to-day.
Sion was formerly a suffragan bishopric of Tarantaise, which in turn has become to-day a suffragan of Chambéry.
XXXII
ST. PAUL TROIS CHÂTEAUX
St. Paul Trois Châteaux is a very old settlement. As a bishopric it was known anciently as Tricastin, and dates from the second century. St. Restuit was its first bishop. It was formerly the seat of the ancient Roman colony of Augusta Tricastinorum. Tradition is responsible for the assertion that St. Paul was the first prelate of the diocese, and being born blind was cured by Jesus Christ. This holy man, after having recovered his sight, took the name of Restuit, under which name he is still locally honoured. One of his successors erected to his honour, in the fourth century, a chapel and an altar. These, of course have disappeared – hence we have only tradition, which, to say the least, and the most, is, in this case, quite legendary.
The city was devastated in the fifth century by the Vandals; in 1736 by the Saracens; and taken and retaken by the Protestants and Catholics in the fourteenth century.
As a bishopric the "Tricastin city" comprised but thirty-six parishes, and in the rearrangement attendant upon the Revolution was suppressed altogether. Ninety-five bishops in all had their seats here up to the time of suppression. Certainly the religious history of this tiny city has been most vigorous and active.
The city conserves to-day somewhat of its ancient birthright, and is a picturesque and romantic spot, in which all may tarry awhile amid its tortuous streets and the splendid remains of its old-time builders. Few do drop off, even, in their annual rush southward, in season or out, and the result is that St. Paul Trois Châteaux is to-day a delightfully "old world" spot in the most significant meaning of the phrase.
Of course the habitant still refers to the seat of the former bishop's throne as a cathedral, and it is with pardonable pride that he does so.
This precious old eleventh and twelfth-century church is possessed of as endearing and interesting an aspect as the city itself. It has been restored in recent times, but is much hidden by the houses which hover around its walls. It has a unique portal which opens between two jutting columns whose shafts uphold nothing – not even capitals.
In fact, the general plan of the cathedral follows that of the Latin cross, though in this instance it is of rather robust proportions. The transepts, which are neither deep nor wide, are terminated with an apse, as is also the choir, which depends, for its embellishments, upon the decorative effect produced by eight Corinthian columns.
The interior, the nave in particular, is of unusual height for a not very grand structure; perhaps eighty feet. Its length is hardly greater.
The orders of columns rise vaultwards, surmounted by a simple entablature. These are perhaps not of the species that has come to be regarded as good form in Christian architecture, but which, for many reasons, have found their way into church-building, both before and since the rise of Gothic.
Under a triforium, in blind, is a sculptured drapery; again a feature more pagan than Christian, but which is here more pleasing than when usually found in such a false relation.
Both these details are in imitation of the antique, and, since they date from long before the simulating of pseudo-classical details became a mere fad, are the more interesting and valuable as an art-expression of the time.
For the rest, this one-time cathedral is uncommon and most singular in all its parts, though nowhere of very great inherent beauty.
An ancient gateway bears a statue of the Virgin. It was the gift of a former Archbishop of Paris to the town of his birth.
An ancient Dominican convent is now the École Normale des Petits Frères de Marie. Within its wall have recently been discovered a valuable mosaic work, and a table or altar of carved stone.
In the suburbs of the town have also recently been found much beautiful Roman work of a decorative nature; a geometric parchment in mosaic; a superb lamp, in worked bronze; a head of Mercury (now in the Louvre), and much treasure which would make any antiquarian literally leap for joy, were he but present when they were unearthed.
Altogether the brief résumé should make for a desire to know more of this ancient city whose name, even, is scarcely known to those much-travelled persons who cross and recross France in pursuit of the pleasures of convention alone.
PART IV
The Mediterranean Coast
I
INTRODUCTORY
The Mediterranean shore of the south of France, that delectable land which fringes the great tideless sea, bespeaks the very spirit of history and romance, of Christian fervour, and of profane riot and bloodshed.
Its ancient provinces, – Lower Languedoc, the Narbonensis of Gaul; Provence, the most glorious and golden of all that went to make up modern France, – the mediæval capital of King René, Aix-en-Provence, and the commercial capital of the Phoceans (559 B. C.), Massilia, all combine in a wealth of storied lore which is inexhaustible.
The tide of latter-day travel descends the Rhône to Marseilles, turns eastward to the conventional pleasures of the Riviera, and utterly neglects the charms of La Crau, St. Rémy, Martiques, and Aigues-Mortes; or the more progressive, though still ancient cathedral cities of Montpellier, Béziers, Narbonne, or Perpignan.
There is no question but that the French Riviera is, in winter, a land of sunshiny days, cool nights, and the more or the less rapid life of fashion. Which of these attractions induces the droves of personally-, semi-, and non-conducted tourists to journey thither, with the first advent of northern rigour, is doubtful; it is probably, however, a combination of all three.
It is a beautiful strip of coast-line from Marseilles to Mentone, and its towns and cities are most attractively placed. But a sojourn there "in the season," amid the luxury of a "palace-hotel," or the bareness of a mediocre pension, is a thing to be dreaded. Seekers after health and pleasure are supposed to be wonderfully recouped by the process; but this is more than doubtful. Vice is rarely attractive, but it is always made attractive, and weak tea and pain de ménage in a Riviera boarding-house are no more stimulating than elsewhere; hence the many virtues of this sunlit land are greatly nullified.
"A peculiarity of the Riviera is that each of the prominent watering-places possesses a tutelary deity of our own. (Modest this!) Thus, for instance, no visitor to Cannes is allowed to forget the name of Lord Brougham, while the interest at Beaulieu and Cap Martin centres around another great English statesman, Lord Salisbury. Cap d'Antibes has (or had) for its genius loci Grant Allen, and Valescure is chiefly concerned with Mrs. Humphry Ward and Mrs. Oliphant."
This quotation is, perhaps, enough to make the writer's point here: Why go to the Riviera to think of Lord Brougham, long since dead and gone, any more than to Monte Carlo to be reminded of the unfortunate end which happened to the great system for "breaking the bank" of Lord – , a nineteenth-century nobleman of notoriety – if not of fame?
The charm of situation of the Riviera is great, and the interest awakened by its many reminders of the historied past is equally so; but, with regard to its architectural remains, the most ready and willing temperament will be doomed to disappointment.
The cathedral cities of the Riviera are not of irresistible attraction as shrines of the Christian faith; but they have much else, either within their confines or in the immediate neighbourhood, which will go far to make up for the deficiency of their religious monuments.
It is not that the architectural remains of churches of another day, and secular establishments, are wholly wanting. Far from it; Fréjus, Toulon, Grasse, and Cannes are possessed of delightful old churches, though they are not of ranking greatness, or splendour.
Still the fact remains that, of themselves, the natural beauties of the region and the heritage of a historic past are not enough to attract the throngs which, for any one of a dozen suspected reasons, annually, from November to March, flock hither to this range of towns, which extends from Hyères and St. Raphael, on the west, to Bordighera and Ospadeletti, just over the Italian border, on the east.
It is truly historic ground, this; perhaps more visibly impressed upon the mind and imagination than any other in the world, if we except the Holy Land itself.
Along this boundary were the two main routes, by land and by water, through which the warlike and civil institutions of Rome first made their way into Gaul, conquered it, and impressed thereon indelibly for five hundred years the mighty power which their ambition urged forward.
At Cimiez, a suburb of Nice, they have left a well-preserved amphitheatre; at Antibes the remains of Roman towers; Villefranche – the port of Nice – was formerly a Roman port; Fréjus, the former Forum Julii, has remains of its ancient harbour, its city walls, an amphitheatre, a gateway, and an arch, and, at some distance from the city, the chief of all neighbouring remains, an aqueduct, the crumbling stones of which can be traced for many miles.
Above the promontory of Monaco, where the Alps abruptly meet the sea, stands the tiny village of La Turbie, some nineteen hundred feet above the waters of the sparklingly brilliant Mediterranean. Here stands that venerable ruined tower, the great Trophœa Augusti of the Romans, now stayed and strutted by modern masonry. It commemorates the Alpine victories of the first of the emperors, and overlooks both Italy and France. Stripped to-day of the decorations and sculptures which once graced its walls, it stands as a reminder of the first splendid introduction of the luxuriant architecture of Rome into the precincts of the Western Empire.
Here it may be recalled that sketching, even from the hilltops, is a somewhat risky proceeding for the artist. The surrounding eminences – as would be likely so near the Italian border – are frequently capped with a fortress, and occupied by a small garrison, the sole duty of whose commandant appears to be "heading off," or worse, those who would make a picturesque note of the environment of this ci-devant Roman stronghold. The process of transcribing "literary notes" is looked upon with equal suspicion, or even greater disapproval, in that – in English – they are not so readily translated as is even a bad drawing. So the admonition is here advisedly given for "whom it may concern."
From the Rhône eastward, Marseilles alone has any church of a class worthy to rank with those truly great. Its present cathedral of Ste. Marie-Majeure assuredly takes, both as to its plan and the magnitude on which it has been carried out, the rank of a masterwork of architecture. It is a modern cathedral, but it is a grand and imposing basilica, after the Byzantine manner.
Westward, if we except Béziers, where there is a commanding cathedral; Narbonne, where the true sky-pointing Gothic is to be found; and Perpignan, where there is a very ancient though peculiarly disposed cathedral, there are no really grand cathedral churches of this or any other day. On the whole, however, all these cities are possessed of a subtle charm of manner and environment which tell a story peculiarly their own.
Foremost among these cities of Southern Gaul, which have perhaps the greatest and most appealing interest for the traveller, are Carcassonne and Aigues-Mortes.
Each of these remarkable reminders of days that are gone is unlike anything elsewhere. Their very decay and practical desertion make for an interest which would otherwise be unattainable.
Aigues-Mortes has no cathedral, nor ever had; but Carcassonne has a very beautiful, though small, example in St. Nazaire, treated elsewhere in this book.
Both Aigues-Mortes and Carcassonne are the last, and the greatest, examples of the famous walled and fortified cities of the Middle Ages.
Aigues-Mortes itself is a mere dead thing of the marshes, which once held ten thousand souls, and witnessed all the pomp and glitter which attended upon the embarking of Louis IX. on his chivalrous, but ill-starred, ventures to the African coasts.
"Here was a city built by the whim of a king – the last of the Royal Crusaders." To-day it is a coffin-like city with perhaps a couple of thousand pallid, shaking mortals, striving against the marsh-fever, among the ruined houses, and within the mouldering walls of an ancient Gothic burgh.
II
ST. SAUVEUR D'AIX
Aix, the former capital of Provence, one of the most famous ancient provinces, the early seat of wealth and civilization, and the native land of the poetry and romance of mediævalism, was the still more ancient Aquæ Sextiæ of the Romans – so named for the hot springs of the neighbourhood. It was their oldest colony in Gaul, and was founded by Sextius Calvinus in B. C. 123.
In King René's time, – "le bon roi" died at Aix in 1480, —Aix-en-Provence was more famous than ever as a "gay capital," where "mirth and song and much good wine" reigned, if not to a degenerate extent, at least to the full expression of liberty.
In 1481, just subsequent to René's death, the province was annexed to the Crown, and fifty years later fell into the hands of Charles V., who was proclaimed King of Arles and Provence. This monarch's reign here was of short duration, and he evacuated the city after two months' tenure.
During all this time the church of Aix, from the foundation of the archbishopric by St. Maxine in the first century (as stated rather doubtfully in the "Gallia Christiania"), ever advanced hand in hand with the mediæval gaiety and splendour that is now past.
Who ever goes to Aix now? Not many Riviera tourists even, and not many, unless they are on a mission bent, will cross the Rhône and the Durance when such appealingly attractive cities as Arles, Avignon, and Nîmes lie on the direct pathway from north to south.
Formerly the see was known as the Province of Aix. To-day it is known as Aix, Arles, and Embrun, and covers the Department of Bouches-du-Rhône, with the exception of Marseilles, which is a suffragan bishopric of itself.
The chief ecclesiastical monuments of Aix are the cathedral of St. Sauveur, with its most unusual baptistère; the church of St. Jean-de-Malte of the fourteenth century; and the comparatively modern early eighteenth-century church of La Madeleine, with a fine "Annunciation" confidently attributed by local experts to Albrecht Dürer.
The cathedral of St. Sauveur is, in part, an eleventh-century church. The portions remaining of this era are not very extensive, but they do exist, and the choir, which was added in the thirteenth century, made the first approach to a completed structure. In the next century the choir was still more elaborated, and the tower and the southern aisle of the nave added. This nave is, therefore, the original nave, as the northern aisle was not added until well into the seventeenth century.
The west façade contains a wonderful, though non-contemporary, door and doorway in wood and stone of the early sixteenth century. This doorway is in two bays, divided by a pier, on which is superimposed a statue of the Virgin and Child, framed by a light garland of foliage and fruits. Above are twelve tiny statuettes of Sibylles or the theological virtues placed in two rows. The lower range of the archivolt is divided by pilasters bearing the symbols of the Evangelists, deeply cut arabesques of the Genii, and the four greater prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
Taken together, these late sculptures of the early sixteenth century form an unusually mixed lot; but their workmanship and disposition are pleasing and of an excellence which in many carvings of an earlier date is often lacking.
The interior shows early "pointed" and simple round arches, with pilasters and pediment which bear little relation to Gothic, and are yet not Romanesque of the conventional variety. These features are mainly not suggestive of the Renaissance either, though work of this style crops out, as might be expected, in the added north aisle of the nave.
The transepts, too, which are hardly to be remarked from the outside, – being much hemmed about by the surrounding buildings, – also indicate their Renaissance origin.
The real embellishments of the interior are: a triptych – "The Burning Bush," with portraits of King René, Queen Jeanne de Laval, and others; another of "The Annunciation;" a painting of St. Thomas, by a sixteenth-century Flemish artist; and some sixteenth-century tapestries. None of these features, while acceptable enough as works of art, compare in worth or novelty with the tiny baptistère, which is claimed as of the sixth century.
This is an unusual work in Gaul, the only other examples being at Poitiers and Le Puy. It resembles in plan and outline its more famous contemporary at Ravenna, and shows eight antique columns, from a former temple to Apollo, with dark shafts and lighter capitals. The dome has a modern stucco finish, little in keeping with the general tone and purport of this accessory. The cloister of St Sauveur, in the Lombard style, is very curious, with its assorted twisted and plain columns, some even knotted. The origin of its style is again bespoke in certain of the round-headed arches. Altogether, as an accessory to the cathedral, if to no other extent, this Lombard detail is forceful and interesting.
