Kitabı oku: «The Cathedrals of Southern France», sayfa 17
XIII
ST. ETIENNE DE TOULOUSE
The provincialism of Toulouse has been the theme of many a French writer of ability, – offensively provincial, it would seem from a consensus of these written opinions.
"Life and movement in abundance, but what a life!" … "The native is saved from coarseness by his birth, but after a quarter of an hour the substratum shows itself." … "The working girl is graceful and has the vivacity of a bird, but there is nothing in her cackle." … "How much more beautiful are the stars that mirror themselves in the gutter of the Rue du Bac." … "There is a yelp in the accents of the people of the town."
Contrariwise we may learn also that "the water is fine," "the quays are fine," and "fine large buildings glow in the setting sun in bright and softened hues," and "in the far distance lies the chain of the Pyrenees, like a white bed of watery clouds," and "the river, dressed always in smiling verdure, gracefully skirts the city."
These pessimistic and optimistic views of others found the contributors to this book in somewhat of a quandary as to the manner of mood and spirit in which they should approach this provincial capital.
They had heard marvels of its Romanesque church of St. Saturnin, perhaps the most perfect and elaborate of any of its kind in all France; of the curious amalgamated edifice, now the cathedral of St. Etienne, wherein two distinct church bodies are joined by an unseemly ligature; of the church of the Jacobins; and of the "seventy-seven religious establishments" enumerated by Taine.
All these, or less, were enough to induce one to cast suspicion aside and descend upon the city with an open mind.
Two things one must admit: Toulouse does somewhat approach the gaiety of a capital, and it is provincial.
Its list of attractions for the visitor is great, and its churches numerous and splendid, so why carp at the "ape-like manners" of the corner loafers, who, when all is said, are vastly less in number here than in many a northern centre of population.
The Musée is charming, both as to the disposition of its parts and its contents. It was once a convent, and has a square courtyard or promenade surrounded by an arcade. The courtyard is set about with green shrubs, and a lofty brick tower, pierced with little arched windows and mullioned with tiny columns, rises skyward in true conventual fashion.
Altogether the Musée, in the attractiveness of its fabric and the size and importance of its collections, must rank, for interest to the tourist, at the very head of those outside Paris itself.
As for the churches, there are many, the three greatest of which are the cathedral of St. Etienne, St. Saturnin, and the Église des Jacobins; in all is to be observed the universal application or adoption of des matériaux du pays– bricks.
In the cathedral tower, and in that of the Église des Jacobins, a Gothic scheme is worked out in these warm-toned bricks, and forms, in contrast with the usual execution of a Gothic design, a most extraordinary effect; not wholly to the detriment of the style, but certainly not in keeping with the original conception and development of "pointed" architecture.
In 1863 Viollet-le-Duc thoroughly and creditably restored St. Saturnin at great expense, and by this treatment it remains to-day as the most perfectly preserved work extant of its class.
It is vast, curious, and in a rather mixed style, though thoroughly Latin in motive.
It is on the border-line of two styles; of the Italian, with respect to the full semicircular arches and vaulting of the nave and aisles; the square pillars destitute of all ornament, except another column standing out in flat relief – an intimation of the quiet and placid force of their functions.
With the transition comes a change in the flowered capitals, from the acanthus to tracery and grotesque animals.
There are five domes covering the five aisles, each with a semicircular vault. The walls, with their infrequent windows, are very thick.
The delightful belfry – of five octagonal stages – which rises from the crossing of the transepts, presents, from the outside, a fine and imposing arrangement. So, too, the chapelled choir, with its apse of rounded vaults rising in imposing tiers. This fine church is in direct descent from the Roman manner; built and developed as a simple idea, and, like all antique and classical work, – approaching purity, – is a living thing, in spite of the fact that it depicts the sentiment of a dead and gone past.
It might not be so successfully duplicated to-day, but, considering that St. Saturnin dates from the eleventh century, its commencement was sufficiently in the remote past to allow of its having been promulgated under a direct and vigorous Roman influence.
The brick construction of St. Saturnin and of the cathedral is not of that justly admired quality seen in the ancient Convent of the Jacobins, which dates from the thirteenth century. Here is made perhaps the most beautiful use of this style of mediæval building. It is earlier than the Pont de Montauban, the churches at Moissac or Lombez, and even the cathedral at Albi, but much later than the true Romanesque brickwork, which alternated rows of brick with other materials.
The builders of Gallo-Romain and Merovingian times favoured this earlier method, but work in this style is seldom met with of a later date than the ninth century.
The Église of St. Saturnin shows, in parts, brickwork of a century earlier than the Église des Jacobins, but, as before said, it is not so beautiful.
When the Renaissance came to deal with brique, it did not do so badly. Certainly the domestic and civil establishments of Touraine in this style – to particularize only one section – are very beautiful. Why the revival was productive of so much thorough badness when it dealt with stone is one of the things which the expert has not as yet attempted to explain; at least, not convincingly.
The contrasting blend of the northern and southern motive in the hybrid cathedral at Toulouse will not remain unnoticed for long after the first sensation of surprise at its curious ground-plan passes off.
Here are seen a flamboyant northern choir and aisles in strange juxtaposition with a thirteenth-century single vaulted nave, after the purely indigenous southern manner.
This nave nearly equals in immensity those in the cathedrals of Albi and Bordeaux. It has the great span of sixty-two feet, necessitating the employment of huge buttresses, which would be remarkable anywhere, in order to take the thrust. The unobstructed flooring of this splendid nave lends an added dignity of vastness. Near the vaulted roof are the only apertures in the walls. Windows, as one knows them elsewhere, are practically absent.
The congregations which assemble in this great aisleless nave present a curiously animated effect by reason of the fact that they scatter themselves about in knots or groups rather than crowding against either the altar-rail or pulpit, occasionally even overflowing into the adjoining choir. The nave is entirely unobstructed by decorations, such as screens, pillars, or tombs. It is a mere shell, sans gallery, sans aisles, and sans triforium.
The development of the structure from the individual members of nave and choir is readily traced, and though these parts show not the slightest kind of relationship one to the other, it is from these two fragmentary churches that the completed, if imperfect, whole has been made.
The west front, to-day more than ever, shows how badly the cathedral has been put together; the uncovered bricks creep out here and there, and buildings to the left, which formerly covered the incongruous joint between the nave and choir, are now razed, making the patchwork even more apparent. The square tower which flanks the portal to the north is not unpleasing, and dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The portal is not particularly beautiful, and is bare of decorations of note. It appears to have been remodelled at some past time with a view to conserving the western rose window.
There are no transepts or collateral chapels, which tends to make the ground-plan the more unusual and lacking in symmetry.
The choir (1275-1502) is really very beautiful, taken by itself, far more so than the nave, from which it is extended on a different axis.
It was restored after a seventeenth-century fire, and is supposed to be less beautiful to-day than formerly.
There are seventeen chapels in this choir, with much coloured glass of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, all with weird polychromatic decorations in decidedly bad taste.
Toulouse became a bishopric in the third century, with St. Saturnin as its first bishop. It was raised to the rank of archiepiscopal dignity in 1327, a distinction which it enjoys to-day in company with Narbonne. Six former suffragan bishoprics, Pamiers, Rieux, Mirepoix, Saint-Papoul, Lombez, and Lavaur were suppressed at the Revolution.
In the magnificent Musée of the city is un petit monument, without an inscription, but bearing a cross gammée or Swastika, and a palm-leaf, symbols of the divine Apollo and Artemis. It seems curious that this tiny record in stone should have been found, as it was, in the mountains which separate the sources of the Garonne and the Adour, as the Swastika is a symbol supposedly indigenous to the fire and sun-worshippers of the East, where it figures in a great number of their monuments.
It is called, by the local antiquary, a Pyrenean altar. If this is so, it is of course of pagan origin, and is in no way connected with Christian art.
XIV
ST. NAZAIRE DE CARCASSONNE
With old and new Carcassonne one finds a contrast, if not as great as between the hyphenated Hungarian cities of Buda and Pest, at least as marked in detail.
In most European settlements, where an old municipality adjoins a modern one, walls have been razed, moats filled, and much general modernization has been undertaken.
With Carcassonne this is not so; its winding ways, its culs-de-sacs, narrow alleys, and towering walls remain much as they always were, and the great stronghold of the Middle Ages, vulnerable – as history tells – from but one point, remains to-day, after its admirable restoration of roof and capstone, much as it was in the days when modern Carcassonne was but a scattering hamlet beneath the walls of the older fortification.
One thing will always be recalled, and that is that a part of the enceinte of the ancient Cité was a construction of the sixth century – the days of the Visigoths – and that its subsequent development into an almost invulnerable fortress was but the endorsement which later centuries gave to the work and forethought of a people who were supposed to possess no arts, and very little of ingenuity.
This should suggest a line of investigation to one so minded; while for us, who regard the ancient walls merely as a boundary which sheltered and protected a charming Gothic church, it is perhaps sufficient to recall the inconsistency in many previous estimates as to what great abilities, if any, the Goths possessed.
If it is true that the Visigoths merely followed Roman tradition, so much the more creditable to them that they preserved these ancient walls to the glory of those who came after, and but added to the general plan.
Old and new Carcassonne, as one might call them, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had each their own magistrates and a separate government. The Cité, elevated above the ville, held also the garrison, the presidial seat, and the first seneschalship of the province.
The bishopric of the Cité is not so ancient as the ville itself; for the first prelate there whose name is found upon record was one Sergius, "who subscribed to a 'Council' held at Narbonne in 590."
St. Hilaire, who founded the abbey at Poitiers, came perhaps before Sergius, but his tenure is obscure as to its exact date.
The cathedral of St. Michel, in the lower town, has been, since 1803, the seat of the bishop's throne.
It is a work unique, perhaps, in its design, but entirely unfeeling and preposterous in its overelaborate decorations. It has a long parallelogram-like nave, "entièrement peinte," as the custodian refers to it. It has, to be sure, a grand vault, strong and broad, but there are no aisles, and the chapels which flank this gross nave are mere painted boxes.
Episcopal dignity demanded that some show of importance should be given to the cathedral, and it was placed in the hands of Viollet-le-Duc in 1849 for restoration. Whatever his labours may have been, he doubtless was not much in sympathy with this clumsy fabric, and merely "restored" it in some measure approaching its twelfth-century form.
It is with St. Nazaire de Carcassonne, the tiny église of the old Cité and the ci-devant cathedral that we have to do.
This most fascinating church, fascinating for itself none the less than its unique environment, is, in spite of the extended centuries of its growth, almost the equal in the purity of its Gothic to that of St. Urbain at Troyes. And this, in spite of evidences of rather bad joining up of certain warring constructive elements.
The structure readily composes itself into two distinct parts: that of the Romanesque (round arch and barrel vault) era and that of the Gothic of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
No consideration of St. Nazaire de Carcassonne is possible without first coming to a realization of the construction and the functions of the splendidly picturesque and effective ramparts which enclosed the ancient Cité, its cathedral, châteaux, and various civil and domestic establishments.
In brief, its history and chronology commences with the Visigoth foundation, extending from the fifth to the eighth centuries to the time (1356) when it successfully resisted the Black Prince in his bloody ravage, by sword and fire, of all of Languedoc.
Legend has it that in Charlemagne's time, after that monarch had besieged the town for many years and was about to raise the siege in despair, a certain tower, – which flanked the château, – defended only by a Gauloise known as Carcaso, suddenly gave way and opened a breach by which the army was at last able to enter.
A rude figure perpetuating the fame of this Madame Carcaso– a veritable Amazon, it would seem – is still seen, rudely carved, over the Porte Narbonnaise.
It is the inner line of ramparts which dates from the earliest period. The château, the postern-gate, and most of the interior construction are of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while the outer fortification is of the time of St. Louis, the latter part of the thirteenth century.
The Saracens successfully attacked and occupied the city from 713 to 759, but were routed by Pepin-le-Bref. In 1090 was first founded the strong vicomtale dynasty of the Trencavels. In 1210 the Crusaders, under Simon de Montfort and the implacable Abbot of Citeaux, laid siege to the Cité, an act which resulted in the final massacre, fifty of the besieged – who surrendered – being hanged, and four hundred burned alive.
In addition to the walls and ramparts were fifty circular protecting towers. The extreme length of the inner enclosure is perhaps three-quarters of a mile, and of the outer nearly a full mile.
It is impossible to describe the magnitude and splendour of these city walls, which, up to the time of their restoration by Viollet-le-Duc, had scarcely crumbled at all. The upper ranges of the towers, roof-tops, ramparts, etc., had become broken, of course, and the sky-line had become serrated, but the walls, their foundations, and their outline plan had endured as few works of such magnitude have before or since.
Carcassonne, its history, its romance, and its picturesque qualities, has ever appealed to the poet, painter, and historian alike.
Something of the halo of sentiment which surrounds this marvellous fortified city will be gathered from the following praiseful admiration by Gustave Nadaud:
CARCASSONNE
"'I'm growing old, I've sixty years;
I've laboured all my life in vain;
In all that time of hopes and fears
I've failed my dearest wish to gain;
I see full well that here below
Bliss unalloyed there is for none.
My prayer will ne'er fulfilment know;
I never have seen Carcassonne,
I never have seen Carcassonne!
"'You see the city from the hill —
It lies beyond the mountains blue,
And yet to reach it one must still
Five long and weary leagues pursue,
And, to return, as many more!
Ah! had the vintage plenteous grown,
The grape withheld its yellow store!
I shall not look on Carcassonne,
I shall not look on Carcassonne!
"'They tell me every day is there
Not more nor less than Sunday gay;
In shining robes and garments fair
The people walk upon their way.
One gazes there on castle walls
As grand as those of Babylon,
A bishop and two generals!
I do not know fair Carcassonne,
I do not know fair Carcassonne!
"'The curé's right; he says that we
Are ever wayward, weak, and blind;
He tells us in his homily
Ambition ruins all mankind;
Yet could I there two days have spent,
While the autumn sweetly shone,
Ah, me! I might have died content
When I had looked on Carcassonne,
When I had looked on Carcassonne!
"'Thy pardon, Father, I beseech,
In this my prayer if I offend;
One something sees beyond his reach
From childhood to his journey's end.
My wife, our little boy, Aignan,
Have travelled even to Narbonne,
My grandchild has seen Perpignan,
And I have not seen Carcassonne,
And I have not seen Carcassonne!'
"So crooned one day, close by Limoux,
A peasant double bent with age,
'Rise up, my friend,' said I, 'with you
I'll go upon this pilgrimage.'
We left next morning his abode,
But (Heaven forgive him) half way on
The old man died upon the road;
He never gazed on Carcassonne,
Each mortal has his Carcassonne!"
St. Nazaire is possessed of a Romanesque nave which dates from 1096, but the choir and transepts are of the most acceptable Gothic forms of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
This choir is readily accounted as a masterwork of elegance, is purely northern in style and treatment, and possesses also those other attributes of the perfectionnement of the style – fine glass, delicate fenestration, and superlative grace throughout, as contrasted with the heavier and more cold details of the Romanesque variety.
The nave was dedicated by Urbain II., and was doubtless intended for defence, if its square, firmly bedded towers and piers are suggestive of that quality. The principal porte– it does not rise to the grandeur of a portail– is a thorough Roman example. The interior, with its great piers, its rough barrel-vault, and its general lack of grace and elegance, bespeaks its functions as a stronghold. A Romanesque tower in its original form stands on the side which adjoins the ramparts.
With the choir comes the contrast, both inside and out.
The apside, the transepts, the eleven gorgeous windows, and the extreme grace of its piers and vaulting, all combine in the fullest expression of the architectural art of its time.
This admirable Gothic addition was the work of Bishop Pierre de Rochefort in 1321. The transept chapels and the apse are framed with light soaring arches, and the great easterly windows are set with brilliant glass.
In a side chapel is the former tomb of Simon de Montfort, whose remains were buried here in 1218. At a subsequent time they were removed to Montfort l'Amaury in the Isle of France. Another remarkable tomb is that of Bishop Radulph (1266). It shows an unusually elaborate sculptured treatment for its time, and is most ornate and beautiful.
In the choir are many fine fourteenth-century statues; a tomb with a sleeping figure, thought to be that of Bishop du Puy of Carcassonne; statues of the Virgin, St. Nazaire, and the twelve apostles; an elaborate high-altar; and a pair of magnificent candlesticks, bearing the arms of Bishop Martin (1522).
An eleventh-century crypt lies beneath the choir. The sacristy, as it is to-day, was formerly a thirteenth-century chapel.
The organ is commonly supposed to be the most ancient in France. It is not of ranking greatness as a work of art, but it is interesting to know that it has some redeeming quality, aside from its conventional ugliness.
The tour carrée, which is set in the inner rampart just in front of the cathedral, is known as the Bishop's Tower. It is a tower of many stages, and contains some beautifully vaulted chambers.
The celebrated tour des Visigoths, which is near by, is the most ancient of all.
The entrance to the old Cité is via the Pont Vieux, which is itself a mediæval twelfth or thirteenth century architectural monument of rare beauty. In the middle of this old bridge is a very ancient iron cross.
