Kitabı oku: «The Cathedrals of Southern France», sayfa 18
XV
CATHÉDRALE DE PAMIERS
"Une petite ville sur la rive droite de l'Ariège, siege d'un évêche." These few words, with perhaps seven accompanying lines, usually dismiss this charming little Pyrenean city, so far as information for the traveller is concerned.
It is, however, one of these neglected tourist points which the traveller has ever passed by in his wild rush "across country."
To be sure, it is considerably off the beaten track; so too are its neighbouring ancient bishoprics of Mirepoix and St. Bertrand de Comminges, and for that reason they are comparatively unspoiled.
The great and charming attraction of Pamiers is its view of the serrated ridge of the Pyrenees from the promenade de Castellat, just beyond the cathedral.
For the rest, the cathedral, the fortified Église de Notre Dame du Camp, the ancient Église de Cordeliers, the many old houses, and the general sub-tropical aspect of the country round about, all combine to present attractions far more edifying and gratifying than the allurements of certain of the Pyrenean "watering-places."
The cathedral itself is not a great work; its charm, as before said, lies in its environments.
Its chief feature – and one of real distinction – is its octagonal clocher, in brick, dating from the fourteenth century. It is a singularly graceful tower, built after the local manner of the Midi of France, of which St. Saturnin and the Église des Jacobins at Toulouse are the most notable.
Its base is a broad square machicolated foundation with no openings, and suggests, as truly as does the tower at Albi, a churchly stronghold unlikely to give way before any ordinary attack.
In the main, the church is a rebuilt, rather than a restored edifice. The nave, and indeed nearly all of the structure, except its dominant octagonal tower, is of the seventeenth century. This work was undertaken and consummated by Mansart after the manner of that period, and is far more acceptable than the effect produced by most "restored churches."
The eleventh-century abbey of St. Antoine formed originally the seat of the throne of the first bishop of Pamiers, Bernard Saisset, in 1297.
XVI
ST. BERTRAND DE COMMINGES
To-day St. Bertrand de Comminges, the ancient Lugdunum Convenarum (through which one traces its communistic foundation), is possessed of something less than six hundred inhabitants. Remains of the Roman ramparts are yet to be seen, and its ci-devant cathedral, – of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries – suppressed in 1790, still dominates the town from its heights. Arthur Young, writing in the eighteenth century, describes its situation thus: "The mountains rise proudly around and give their rough frame to this exquisite little picture."
The diocese grew out of the monkish community which had settled here in the sixth century, when the prelate Suavis became its first bishop. To-day the nearest bishop's seat is at Tarbes, in the archbishopric of Auch.
As to architectural style, the cathedral presents what might ordinarily be called an undesirable mixture, though it is in no way uninteresting or even unpleasing.
The west front has a curious Romanesque doorway, and there is a massiveness of wall and buttress which the rather diminutive proportions of the general plan of the church make notably apparent. Otherwise the effect, from a not too near view-point, is one of a solidity and firmness of building only to be seen in some of the neighbouring fortress-churches.
A tower of rather heavy proportions is to-day capped with a pyramidal slate or timbered apex after the manner of the western towers at Rodez. From a distance, this feature has the suggestion of the development of what may perhaps be a local type of clocher. Closer inspections, when its temporary nature is made plain, disabuses this idea entirely. It is inside the walls that the great charm of this church lies. It is elaborately planned, profuse in ornament, – without being in any degree redundant, – and has a warmth and brilliancy which in most Romanesque interiors is wanting.
This interior is representative, on a small scale, of that class of structure whose distinctive feature is what the French architect calls a nef unique, meaning, in this instance, one of those great single-chambered churches without aisles, such as are found at Perpignan, new Carcassonne, Lodève, and in a still more amplified form at Albi.
There are of course no aisles; and for a length of something over two hundred feet, and a breadth of fifty-five, the bold vault – in the early pointed style – roofs one of the most attractive and pleasing church interiors it is possible to conceive.
Of the artistic accessories it is impossible to be too enthusiastic. There are sixty-six choir-stalls, most elaborately carved in wood – perhaps mahogany – of a deep rich colouring seldom seen. Numerous other sculptured details in wood and stone set off with unusual effect the great and well-nigh windowless side walls.
The organ buffet of Renaissance workmanship – as will naturally be inferred – is a remarkably elaborate work, much more to be admired than many of its contemporaries.
Among the other decorative features are an elaborately conceived "tree of Jesse," an unusually massive rood-loft or jube, and a high-altar of much magnificence.
The choir is surrounded by eleven chapels, showing in some instances the pure pointed style, and in the latter ones that of the Renaissance.
A fourteenth-century funeral monument of Bishop Hugh de Castillione is an elaborate work in white marble; while a series of paintings on the choir walls, – illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand, – though of a certain crudity, tend to heighten the interest without giving that effect of the over-elaboration of irrelative details not unfrequently seen in some larger churches.
At St. Bertrand de Comminges and the cathedrals at Arles, Cavaillon, and Aix-en-Provence, Elne-en-Roussillon, and Le Puy-en-Velay are conserved – in a more or less perfect state of preservation – a series of delightful twelfth-century cloisters. These churches possess this feature in common with the purely monastic houses, whose builders so frequently lavished much thought and care on these enclosed and cloistered courtyards.
As a mere detail – or accessory, if you will, – an ample cloister is expressive of much that is wanting in a great church which lacks this contributory feature.
Frequently this part was the first to succumb to the destroying influence of time, and leave a void for which no amount of latter-day improvement could make up. Even here, while the cloister ranks as one of the most beautiful yet to be seen, it is part in a ruinous condition.
XVII
ST. JEAN-BAPTISTE D'AIRE
This city of the Landes, that wild, bleak region of sand-dunes and shepherds, abuts upon the more prosperous and fertile territory of the valley of the Adour. By reason of this juxtaposition, its daily life presents a series of contrasting elements as quaint and as interesting as those of the bordering Franco-Spanish cities of Perpignan and Bayonne.
From travellers in general, and lovers of architecture in particular, it has ever received but scant consideration, though it is by no means the desert place that early Victorian writers would have us believe. It is in reality a well-built mediæval town, with no very lurid events of the past to its discredit, and, truthfully, with no very marvellous attributes beyond a certain subtle charm and quaintness which is perhaps the more interesting because of its unobtrusiveness.
It has been a centre of Christian activity since the days of the fifth century, when its first bishop, Marcel, was appointed to the diocese by the mother-see of Auch.
The cathedral of St. Jean-Baptiste belongs to the minor class of present-day cathedrals, and is of a decidedly conglomerate architectural style, with no imposing dimensions, and no really vivid or lively details of ornamentation. It was begun in the thirteenth century, and the work of rebuilding and restoration has been carried on well up to the present time.
XVIII
STS. BENOIT ET VINCENT DE CASTRES
Castres will ever rank in the mind of the wayfarer along the byways of the south of France as a marvellous bit of stage scenery, rather than as a collection of profound, or even highly interesting, architectural types.
It is one of those spots into which a traveller drops quite unconsciously en route to somewhere else; and lingers a much longer time than circumstances would seem to justify.
This is perhaps inexplicable, but it is a fact, which is only in a measure accounted for by reason of the "local colour" – whatever that vague term of the popular novelist may mean – and customs which weave an entanglement about one which is difficult to resist.
The river Agout is as weird a stream as its name implies, and divides this haphazard little city of the Tarn into two distinct, and quite characteristically different, parts.
Intercourse between Castres and its faubourg, Villegondom, is carried on by two stone bridges; and from either bank of the river, or from either of the bridges, there is always in a view a ravishingly picturesque ensemble of decrepit walls and billowy roof-tops, that will make the artist of brush and pencil angry with fleeting time.
The former cathedral is not an entrancingly beautiful structure; indeed, it is not after the accepted "good form" of any distinct architectural style. It is a poor battered thing which has suffered hardly in the past; notably at the hands of the Huguenots in 1567. As it stands to-day, it is practically a seventeenth-century construction, though it is yet unfinished and lacks its western façade.
The vaulting of the choir, and the chapels are the only constructive elements which warrant remark. There are a few paintings in the choir, four rather attractive life-size statues, and a series of severe but elegant choir-stalls.
The former évêché is to-day the Hôtel de Ville, but was built by Mansart in 1666, and has a fine escalier in sculptured stone.
As a centre of Christianity, Castres is very ancient. In 647 there was a Benedictine abbey here. The bishopric, however, did not come into being until 1317, and was suppressed in 1790.
XIX
NOTRE DAME DE RODEZ
The cathedral at Rodez, whose diocese dates from the fifth century and whose first bishop was St. Amand, is, in a way, reminiscent – in its majesty of outline and dominant situation – of that at Albi.
It is not, however, after the same manner, but resembles it more particularly with respect to its west façade, which is unpierced in its lower stages by either doorway or window.
Here, too, the entrance is midway in its length, and its front presents that sheer flank of walled barrier which is suggestive of nothing but a fortification.
This great church – for it is truly great, pure and simple – makes up in width what it lacks in length. Its nave and aisles are just covered by a span of one hundred and twenty feet, – a greater dimension than is possessed by Chartres or Rouen, and nearly as great as Paris or Amiens.
Altogether Notre Dame de Rodez is a most pleasing church, though conglomerate as to its architecture, and as bad, with respect to the Renaissance gable of its façade, as any contemporary work in the same style.
Rodez lacks, however, the great enfolding tower central of Albi.
This mellow and warm-toned cathedral, from its beginnings in the latter years of the thirteenth century to the time when the Renaissance cast its dastardly spell over the genius who inspired its original plan, was the result of the persevering though intermittent work of three centuries, and even then the two western towers were left incomplete.
This perhaps was fortunate; otherwise they might have been topped with such an excrescence as looms up over the doorless west façade.
The Gascon compares the pyramidal roofs which cap either tower – and with some justness, too – to the pyramids of Egypt, and for that reason the towers are, to him, the most wonderful in the universe. Subtle humour this, and the observer will have little difficulty in tracing the analogy.
Still, they really are preferable, as a decorative feature, to the tomb-like headboard which surmounts the central gable which they flank. The ground-plan is singularly uniform, with transepts scarcely defined – except in the interior arrangements – and yet not wholly absent.
The elaborate tower, called often and with some justification the beffroi, which flanks, or rather indicates, the northerly transept, is hardly pure as to its Gothic details, but it is a magnificent work nevertheless.
It dates from 1510, is two hundred and sixty-five feet high, and is typical of most of the late pointed work of its era. The final stage is octagonal and is surmounted by a statue of the Virgin surrounded by the Evangelists. This statue may or may not be a worthy work of art; it is too elevated, however, for one to decide.
The decorations of the west front, except for the tombstone-like Renaissance gable, are mainly of the same period as the north transept tower, and while perhaps ultra-florid, certainly make a fine appearance when viewed across the Place d'Armes.
This west front, moreover, possesses that unusual attribute of a southern church, an elaborate Gothic rose window; and, though it does not equal in size or design such magnificent examples as are seen in the north, at Reims, Amiens, or Chartres, is, after all, a notable detail of its kind.
The choir, chevet, and apside are of massive building, though not lacking grace, in spite of the absence of the arcs-boutants of the best Gothic.
Numerous grotesque gargoyles dot the eaves and gables, though whether of the spout variety or mere symbols of superstition one can hardly tell with accuracy when viewed from the ground level.
The north and south portals of the transepts are of a florid nature, after the manner of most of the decorations throughout the structure, and are acceptable evidence of the ingenious craft of the stone-carver, if nothing more.
The workmanship of these details, however, does not rise to the heights achieved by the architect who outlined the plan and foundation upon which they were latterly imposed. They are, too, sadly disfigured, the tympanum in the north portal having been disgracefully ravished.
The interior arrangements are doubly impressive, not only from the effect of great size, but from the novel colour effect – a sort of dull, glowing pink which seems to pervade the very atmosphere, an effect which contrasts strangely with the colder atmosphere of the Gothic churches of the north. A curious feature to be noted here is that the sustaining walls of the vault rest directly on piers sans capitals; as effective, no doubt, as the conventional manner, but in this case hardly as pleasing.
Two altars, one at either end of nave and choir, duplicate the arrangement seen at Albi.
The organ buffet, too, is of the same massiveness and elaborateness, and is consequently an object of supreme pride to the local authorities.
It seems difficult to make these useful and necessary adjuncts to a church interior of the quality of beauty shared by most other accessories, such as screens, altars, and choir-stalls, which, though often of the contemporary Renaissance period, are generally beautiful in themselves. The organ-case, however, seems to run either to size, heaviness, or grotesqueness, or a combination of all. This is true in this case, where its great size, and plentifully besprinkled rococo ornament, and unpleasantly dull and dingy "pipes" are of no æsthetic value whatever. The organ, moreover, occupies the unusual position – in a French church – of being over the western doorway.
The nave is of extreme height, one hundred and ten feet, and is of unusual width, as are also the aisles.
The rose window, before remarked, shows well from the inside, though its glass is not notable.
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 jubé 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 clôture du chœur. 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 clôture 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.
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. CÉCILE D'ALBI
The cathedral of Ste. Cécile 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-Inférieure.
In the severe and aggressive lines of the easterly, or choir, end, it also resembles the famous church of St. Francis at Assisi, and the ruined church of Sainte Sophie at Famagousta in the Island of Cyprus.
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 poop. A less æsthetic 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 clôture 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. Cécile 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. Cécile 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 debasement, 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 outré or misplaced.
In further explanation of the peculiar fortress-like qualities possessed by Ste. Cécile, 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 châteaux 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 mediæval 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 clôture 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 space.
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 massive tower, the jube and clôture of the choir, the vast unobstructed interior, and the outré 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 space 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. Cécile 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.
