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II
THE CHURCH IN GAUL
Guizot's notable dictum, "If you are fond of romance and history," may well be paraphrased in this wise: "If you are fond of history, read the life histories of great churches."
Leaving dogmatic theory aside, much, if not quite all, of the life of the times in France – up to the end of the sixteenth century – centred more or less upon the Church, using the word in its fullest sense. Aside from its religious significance, the influence of the Church, as is well known and recognized by all, was variously political, social, and perhaps economic.
So crowded and varied were the events of Church history in Gaul, it would be impossible to include even the most important of them in a brief chronological arrangement which should form a part of a book such as this.
It is imperative, however, that such as are mentioned should be brought together in some consecutive manner in a way that should indicate the mighty ebb and flow of religious events of Church and State.
These passed rapidly and consecutively throughout Southern Gaul, which became a part of the kingdom of the French but slowly.
Many bishoprics have been suppressed or merged into others, and again united with these sees from which they had been separated. Whatever may be the influences of the Church, monastic establishments, or more particularly, the bishops and their clergy, to-day, there is no question but that from the evangelization of Gaul to the end of the nineteenth century, the parts played by them were factors as great as any other in coagulating and welding together the kingdom of France.
The very large number of bishops which France has had approximates eight thousand eminent and virtuous names; and it is to the memory of their works in a practical way, none the less than their devotion to preaching the Word itself, that the large number of magnificent ecclesiastical monuments have been left as their heritage.
There is a large share of veneration and respect due these pioneers of Christianity; far more, perhaps, than obtains for those of any other land. Here their activities were so very great, their woes and troubles so very oppressive, and their final achievement so splendid, that the record is one which stands alone.
It is a glorious fact – in spite of certain lapses and influx of fanaticism – that France has ever recognized the sterling worth to the nation of the devotion and wise counsel of her churchmen; from the indefatigable apostles of Gaul to her cardinals, wise and powerful in councils of state.
The evangelization of Gaul was not an easy or a speedy process. On the authority of Abbé Morin of Moulins, who, in La France Pontificale, has undertaken to "chronologize all the bishops and archbishops of France from the first century to our day," Christianity came first to Aix and Marseilles with Lazare de Béthanie in 35 or 36 A. D.; followed shortly after by Lin de Besançon, Clement de Metz, Demêtre de Gap, and Ruf d'Avignon.
Toward the end of the reign of Claudian, and the commencement of that of Nero (54-55 A. D.), there arrived in Gaul the seven Apostle-bishops, the founders of the Church at Arles (St. Trophime), Narbonne (St. Paul), Limoges (St. Martial), Clermont (St. Austremoine), Tours (St. Gatien), Toulouse (St. Saturnin), and Trèves (St. Valère).
It was some years later that Paris received within its walls St. Denis, its first Apostle of Christianity, its first bishop, and its first martyr.
Others as famous were Taurin d'Evreux, Lucien de Beauvais, Eutrope de Saintes, Aventin de Chartres, Nicaise de Rouen, Sixte de Reims, Savinien de Sens, and St. Crescent – the disciple of St. Paul – of Vienne.
From these early labours, through the three centuries following, and down through fifteen hundred years, have passed many traditions of these early fathers which are well-nigh legendary and fabulous.
The Abbé Morin says further: "We have not, it is true, an entirely complete chronology of the bishops who governed the Church in Gaul, but the names of the great and noble army of bishops and clergy, who for eighteen hundred years have succeeded closely one upon another, are assuredly the most beautiful jewels in the crown of France. Their virtues were many and great, – eloquence, love of la patrie, indomitable courage in time of trial, mastery of difficult situation, prudence, energy, patience, and charity." All these grand virtues were practised incessantly, with some regrettable eclipses, attributable not only to misfortune, but occasionally to fault. A churchman even is but human.
With the accession of the third dynasty of kings, – the Capetians, in 987, – the history of the French really began, and that of the Franks, with their Germanic tendencies and elements, became absorbed by those of the Romanic language and character, with the attendant habits and customs.
Only the Aquitanians, south of the Loire, and the Burgundians on the Rhône, still preserved their distinct nationalities.
The feudal ties which bound Aquitaine to France were indeed so slight that, when Hugh Capet, in 990, asked of Count Adelbert of Périgueux, before the walls of the besieged city of Tours: "Who made thee count?" he was met with the prompt and significant rejoinder, "Who made thee king?"
At the close of the tenth century, France was ruled by close upon sixty princes, virtually independent, and yet a still greater number of prelates, – as powerful as any feudal lord, – who considered Hugh Capet of Paris only as one who was first among his peers. Yet he was able to extend his territory to such a degree that his hereditary dynasty ultimately assured the unification of the French nation. Less than a century later Duke William of Normandy conquered England (1066); when began that protracted struggle between France and England which lasted for three hundred years.
Immediately after the return of the pious Louis VII. from his disastrous crusade, his queen, Eleanor, the heiress of Poitou and Guienne, married the young count Henry Plantagenet of Maine and Anjou; who, when he came to the English throne in 1153, "inherited and acquired by marriage" – as historians subtly put it – " the better half of all France."
Until 1322 the Church in France was divided into the following dioceses:
Provincia Remensis (Reims)
Provincia Rotomagensis (All Normandy)
Provincia Turonensis (Touraine, Maine, Anjou, and Brittany)
Provincia Burdegalensis (Poitou, Saintonge, Angumois, Périgord, and Bordelais)
Provincia Auxitana (In Gascoigne)
Provincia Bituricensis (Berri, Bourbonnais, Limosin, and Auvergne)
Provincia Senonensis (Sens)
Provincia Lugdunensis (Bourgogne and Lyonnais)
Provincia Viennensis (Vienne on the Rhône)
Provincia Narbonensis (Septimania)
Provincia Arelatensis (Arles)
Provincia Aquensis (Aix-en-Provence)
Provincia Ebredunensis (The Alpine Valleys)
The stormy days of the reign of Charles V. (late fourteenth century) throughout France were no less stringent in Languedoc than elsewhere.
Here the people rose against the asserted domination of the Duke of Anjou, who, "proud and greedy," was for both qualities abhorred by the Languedocians.
He sought to restrain civic liberty with a permanent military force, and at Nîmes levied heavy taxes, which were promptly resented by rebellion. At Montpellier the people no less actively protested, and slew the chancellor and seneschal.
By the end of the thirteenth century, social, political, and ecclesiastical changes had wrought a wonderful magic with the map of France. John Lackland (sans terre) had been compelled by Philippe-Auguste to relinquish his feudal possessions in France, with the exception of Guienne. At this time also the internal crusades against the Waldenses and Albigenses in southern France had powerfully extended the royal flag. Again, history tells us that it was from the impulse and after influences of the crusading armies to the East that France was welded, under Philippe-le-Bel, into a united whole. The shifting fortunes of France under English rule were, however, such as to put little stop to the progress of church-building in the provinces; though it is to be feared that matters in that line, as most others of the time, went rather by favour than by right of sword.
Territorial changes brought about, in due course, modified plans of the ecclesiastical control and government, which in the first years of the fourteenth century caused certain administrative regulations to be put into effect by Pope John XXII. (who lies buried beneath a gorgeous Gothic monument at Avignon) regarding the Church in the southern provinces.
So well planned were these details that the Church remained practically under the same administrative laws until the Revolution.
Albi was separated from Bourges (1317), and raised to the rank of a metropolitan see; to which were added as suffragans Cahors, Rodez, and Mende, with the newly founded bishoprics of Castres and Vabres added. Toulouse was formed into an archbishopric in 1327; while St. Pons and Alet, as newly founded bishoprics, were given to the ancient see of Narbonne in indemnification for its having been robbed of Toulouse. The ancient diocese of Poitiers was divided into three, and that of Agen into two by the erection of suffragans at Maillezais, Luçon, Sarlat, and Condom. By a later papal bull, issued shortly after their establishment, these bishoprics appear to have been abolished, as no record shows that they entered into the general scheme of the revolutionary suppression.
On August 4, 1790, all chapters of cathedral churches, other than those of the metropoles (the mother sees), their bishops, and in turn their respective curés, were suppressed. This ruling applied as well to all collegiate churches, secular bodies, and abbeys and priories generally.
Many were, of course, reëstablished at a subsequent time, or, at least, were permitted to resume their beneficent work. But it was this general suppression, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, which led up to the general reapportioning of dioceses in that composition of Church and State thereafter known as the Concordat.
Many causes deflected the growth of the Church from its natural progressive pathway. The Protestant fury went nearly to fanaticism, as did the equally fervent attempts to suppress it. The "Temples of Reason" of the Terrorists were of short endurance, but they indicated an unrest that has only in a measure moderated, if one is to take later political events as an indication of anything more than a mere uncontrolled emotion.
Whether a great future awaits Protestantism in France, or not, the power of the Roman Church is undoubtedly waning, in attracting congregations, at least.
Should a Wesley or a Whitfield arise, he might gain followers, as strong men do, and they would draw unto them others, until congregations might abound. But the faith could hardly become the avowed religion of or for the French people. It has, however, a great champion in the powerful newspaper, Le Temps, which has done, and will do, much to popularize the movement.
The Protestantism of Lot and Lot et Garonne is considerable, and it is of very long standing. It is recorded, too, that as late as October, 1901, the Commune of Murat went over en masse to Protestantism because the Catholic bishop at Cahors desired his communicants to rise from their beds at what they considered an inconveniently early hour, in order to hear mass.
This movement in Languedoc was not wholly due to the tyranny of the Duke of Anjou; it was caused in part by the confiscation or assumption of the papal authority by France. This caused not only an internal unrest in Italy, but a turbulence which spread throughout all the western Mediterranean, and even unto the Rhine and Flanders. The danger which threatened the establishment of the Church, by making the papacy a dependence of France, aroused the Italian prelates and people alike, and gave rise to the simultaneous existence of both a French and an Italian Pope.
Charles V. supported the French pontiff, as was but natural, thus fermenting a great schism; with its attendant controversies and horrors.
French and Italian politics became for a time inexplicably mingled, and the kingdom of Naples came to be transferred to the house of Anjou.
The Revolution, following close upon the Jansenist movement at Port Royal, and the bull Unigenitus of the Pope, resulted in such riot and disregard for all established institutions, monarchical, political, and religious, that the latter – quite as much as the others – suffered undue severity.
The Church itself was at this time divided, and rascally intrigue, as well as betrayal, was the order of the day on all sides. Bishops were politicians, and priests were but the tools of their masters; this to no small degree, if we are to accept the written records.
Talleyrand-Périgord, Bishop of Autun, was a member of the National Assembly, and often presided over the sittings of that none too deliberate body.
In the innovations of the Revolution, the Church and the clergy took, for what was believed to be the national good, their full and abiding share in the surrender of past privileges.
At Paris, at the instance of Mirabeau, they even acknowledged, in some measure, the principle of religious liberty, in its widest application.
The appalling massacres of September 2, 1792, fell heavily upon the clergy throughout France; of whom one hundred and forty were murdered at the Carmes alone.
The Archbishop of Arles on that eventful day gave utterance to the following devoted plea:
"Give thanks to God, gentlemen, that He calls us to seal with our blood the faith we profess. Let us ask of Him the grace of final perseverance, which by our own merit we could not obtain."
The Restoration found the Church in a miserable and impoverished condition. There was already a long list of dioceses without bishops; of cardinals, prelates, and priests without charges, many of them in prison.
Congregations innumerable had been suppressed and many sees had been abolished.
The new dioceses, under the Concordat of 1801, one for each department only, were of vast size as compared with those which had existed more numerously before the Revolution.
In 1822 thirty new sees were added to the prelature. To-day there are sixty-seven bishoprics and seventeen archbishoprics, not including the colonial suffragans, but including the diocese of Corsica, whose seat is at Ajaccio.
Church and State are thus seen to have been, from the earliest times, indissolubly linked throughout French dominion.
The king – while there was a king – was the eldest son of the Church, and, it is said, the Church in France remains to-day that part of the Roman communion which possesses the greatest importance for the governing body of that faith. This, in spite of the tendency toward what might be called, for the want of a more expressive word, irreligion. This is a condition, or a state, which is unquestionably making headway in the France of to-day – as well, presumably, as in other countries – of its own sheer weight of numbers.
One by one, since the establishment of the Church in Gaul, all who placed any limits to their ecclesiastical allegiance have been turned out, and so turned into enemies, – the Protestants, the Jansenists, followers of the Bishop of Ypres, and the Constitutionalists. Reconciliation on either side is, and ever has been, apparently, an impossibility.
Freedom of thought and action is undoubtedly increasing its license, and the clergy in politics, while a thing to be desired by many, is, after all, a thing to be feared by the greater number, – for whom a popular government is made. Hence the curtailment of the power of the monks – the real secular propagandists – was perhaps a wise thing. We are not to-day living under the conditions which will permit of a new Richelieu to come upon the scene, and the recent act (1902) which suppressed so many monastic establishments, convents, and religious houses of all ranks, including the Alpine retreat of "La Grande Chartreuse," may be taken rather as a natural process of curtailment than a mere vindictive desire on the part of the State to concern itself with "things that do not matter." On the other hand, it is hard to see just what immediate gain is to result to the nation.
III
THE CHURCH ARCHITECTURE OF SOUTHERN
FRANCE
The best history of the Middle Ages is that suggested by their architectural remains. That is, if we want tangible or ocular demonstration, which many of us do.
Many of these remains are but indications of a grandeur that is past and a valour and a heroism that are gone; but with the Church alone are suggested the piety and devotion which still live, at least to a far greater degree than many other sentiments and emotions; which in their struggle to keep pace with progress have suffered, or become effete by the way.
To the Church, then, or rather religion – if the word be preferred – we are chiefly indebted for the preservation of these ancient records in stone.
Ecclesiastical architecture led the way – there is no disputing that, whatever opinions may otherwise be held by astute archæologists, historians, and the antiquarians, whose food is anything and everything so long as it reeks of antiquity.
The planning and building of a great church was no menial work. Chief dignitaries themselves frequently engaged in it: the Abbot Suger, the foremost architect of his time – prime minister and regent of the kingdom as he was – at St. Denis; Archbishop Werner at Strasbourg; and William of Wykeham in England, to apportion such honours impartially.
Gothic style appears to have turned its back on Italy, where, in Lombardy at all events, were made exceedingly early attempts in this style. This, perhaps, because of satisfying and enduring classical works which allowed no rivalry; a state of affairs to some extent equally true of the south of France. The route of expansion, therefore, was northward, along the Rhine, into the Isle of France, to Belgium, and finally into England.
No more true or imaginative description of Gothic forms has been put into literature than those lines of Sir Walter Scott, which define its characteristics thus:
"… Whose pillars with clustered shafts so trim,
With base and capital flourished 'round,
Seemed bundles of lances which garlands had bound."
In modern times, even in France, church-building neither aspired to, nor achieved, any great distinction.
Since the Concordat what have we had? A few restorations, which in so far as they were carried out in the spirit of the original were excellent; a few added members, as the west front and spires of St. Ouen at Rouen; the towers and western portal at Clermont-Ferrand; and a few other works of like magnitude and worth. For the rest, where anything of bulk was undertaken, it was almost invariably a copy of a Renaissance model, and often a bad one at that; or a descent to some hybrid thing worse even than in their own line were the frank mediocrities of the era of the "Citizen-King," or the plush and horsehair horrors of the Second Empire.
Most characteristic, and truly the most important of all, are the remains of the Gallo-Roman period. These are the most notable and forceful reminders of the relative prominence obtained by mediæval pontiffs, prelates, and peoples.
These relations are further borne out by the frequent juxtaposition of ecclesiastical and civic institutions of the cities themselves, – fortifications, palaces, châteaux, cathedrals, and churches, the former indicating no more a predominance of power than the latter.
A consideration of one, without something more than mere mention of the other, is not possible, and incidentally – even for the church-lover – nothing can be more interesting than the great works of fortification – strong, frowning, and massive – as are yet to be seen at Béziers, Carcassonne, or Avignon. It was this latter city which sheltered within its outer walls that monumental reminder of the papal power which existed in this French capital of the "Church of Rome" – as it must still be called – in the fourteenth century.
To the stranger within the gates the unconscious resemblance between a castellated and battlemented feudal stronghold and the many churches, – and even certain cathedrals, as at Albi, Béziers, or Agde, – which were not unlike in their outline, will present some confusion of ideas.
Between a crenelated battlement or the machicolations of a city wall, as at Avignon; or of a hôtel de ville, as at Narbonne; or the same detail surmounting an episcopal residence, as at Albi, which is a veritable donjon; or the Palais des Papes, is not a difference even of degree. It is the same thing in each case. In one instance, however, it may have been purely for defence, and in the other used as a decorative accessory; in the latter case it was no less useful when occasion required. This feature throughout the south of France is far more common than in the north, and is bound to be strongly remarked.
Two great groups or divisions of architectural style are discernible throughout the south, even by the most casual of observers.
One is the Provençal variety, which clings somewhat closely to the lower valley of the Rhône; and the other, the Aquitanian (with possibly the more restricted Auvergnian).
These types possess in common the one distinctive trait, in some form or other, of the round-arched vaulting of Roman tradition. It is hardly more than a reminiscence, however, and while not in any way resembling the northern Gothic, at least in the Aquitanian species, hovers on the borderland between the sunny south and the more frigid north.
The Provençal type more nearly approximates the older Roman, and, significantly, it has – with less interpolation of modern ideas – endured the longest.
The Aquitanian style of the cathedrals at Périgueux and Angoulême, to specialize but two, is supposed to – and it does truly – bridge the gulf between the round-arched style which is not Roman and the more brilliant and graceful type of Gothic.
With this manner of construction goes, of course, a somewhat different interior arrangement than that seen in the north.
A profound acquaintance with the subject will show that it bears a certain resemblance to the disposition of parts in an Eastern mosque, and to the earlier form of Christian church – the basilica.
In this regard Fergusson makes the statement without reservation that the Eglise de Souillac more nearly resembles the Cairène type of Mohammedan mosque than it does a Christian church – of any era.
A distinct feature of this type is the massive pointed arch, upon which so many have built their definition of Gothic. In truth, though, it differs somewhat from the northern Gothic arch, but is nevertheless very ancient. It is used in early Christian churches, – at Acre and Jaffa, – and was adopted, too, by the architects of the Eastern Empire long before its introduction into Gaul.
The history of its transportation might be made interesting, and surely instructive, were one able to follow its orbit with any definite assurance that one was not wandering from the path. This does not seem possible; most experts, real or otherwise, who have tried it seem to flounder and finally fall in the effort to trace its history in consecutive and logical, or even plausible, fashion.
In illustration this is well shown by that wonderful and unique church of St. Front at Périgueux, where, in a design simple to severity, it shows its great unsimilarity to anything in other parts of France; if we except La Trinité at Anjou, with respect to its roofing and piers of nave.
It has been compared in general plan and outline to St. Marc's at Venice, "but a St. Marc's stripped of its marbles and mosaics."
In the Italian building its founders gathered their inspiration for many of its structural details from the old Byzantine East. At this time the Venetians were pushing their commercial enterprises to all parts. North-western France, and ultimately the British Isles, was the end sought. We know, too, that a colony of Venetians had established itself as far northward as Limoges, and another at Périgueux, when, in 984, this edifice, which might justly be called Venetian in its plan, was begun.
No such decoration or ornamentation was presumed as in its Adriatic prototype, but it had much beautiful carving in the capitals of its pillars and yet other embellishments, such as pavements, monuments, and precious altars, which once, it is said, existed more numerously than now.
Here, then, was the foundation of a new western style, differing in every respect from the Provençal or the Angevinian.
Examples of the northern pointed or Gothic are, in a large way, found as far south as Bayonne in its cathedral; in the spires of the cathedral at Bordeaux; and less grandly, though elegantly, disposed in St. Nazaire in the old Cité de Carcassonne; and farther north at Clermont-Ferrand, where its northern-pointed cathedral is in strong contrast to the neighbouring Notre Dame du Port, a remarkable type distinctly local in its plan and details.
From this point onward, it becomes not so much a question of defining and placing types, as of a chronological arrangement of fact with regard to the activities of the art of church-building.
It is doubtless true that many of the works of the ninth and tenth centuries were but feeble imitations of the buildings of Charlemagne, but it is also true that the period was that which was bringing about the development of a more or less distinct style, and if the Romanesque churches of France were not wholly Roman in spirit they were at least not a debasement therefrom.
Sir Walter Scott has also described the Romanesque manner of church-building most poetically, as witness the following quatrain:
"Built ere the art was known
By pointed aisle and shafted stalk
The arcades of an alleyed walk
To emulate in stone."
However, little remains in church architecture of the pre-tenth century to compare with the grand theatres, arenas, monuments, arches, towers, and bridges which are still left to us. Hence comparison were futile. Furthermore, there is this patent fact to be reckoned with, that the petty followers of the magnificent Charlemagne were not endowed with as luxurious a taste, as large a share of riches, or so great a power; and naturally they fell before the idea they would have emulated.
As a whole France was at this period amid great consternation and bloodshed, and traces of advancing civilization were fast falling before wars and cruelties unspeakable. There came a period when the intellect, instead of pursuing its rise, was, in reality, degenerating into the darkness of superstition.
The church architecture of this period – so hostile to the arts and general enlightenment – was undergoing a process even more fatal to its development than the terrors of war or devastation.
It is a commonplace perhaps to repeat that it was the superstition aroused by the Apocalypse that the end of all things would come with the commencement of the eleventh century. It was this, however, that produced the stagnation in church-building which even the ardour of a few believing churchmen could not allay. The only great religious foundation of the time was the Abbey of Cluny in the early years of the tenth century.
When the eleventh century actually arrived, Christians again bestirred themselves, and the various cities and provinces vied with each other in their enthusiastic devotion to church-building, as if to make up for lost time.
From this time onward the art of church-building gave rise to that higher skill and handicraft, the practice of architecture as an art, of which ecclesiastical art, as was but natural, rose to the greatest height.
The next century was productive of but little change in style, and, though in the north the transition and the most primitive of Gothic were slowly creeping in, the well-defined transition did not come until well forward in the twelfth century, when, so soon after, the new style bloomed forth in all its perfected glory.
The cathedrals of southern France are manifestly not as lively and vigorous as those at Reims, Amiens, or Rouen; none have the splendour and vast extent of old glass as at Chartres, and none of the smaller examples equal the symmetry and delicacy of those at Noyon or Senlis.
Some there be, however, which for magnificence and impressiveness take rank with the most notable of any land. This is true of those of Albi, Le Puy, Périgueux, and Angoulême. Avignon, too, in the ensemble of its cathedral and the papal palace, forms an architectural grouping that is hardly rivalled by St. Peter's and the Vatican itself.
In many of the cities of the south of France the memory of the past, with respect to their cathedrals, is overshadowed by that of their secular and civic monuments, the Roman arenas, theatres, and temples. At Nîmes, Arles, Orange, and Vienne these far exceed in importance and beauty the religious establishments.
The monasteries, abbeys, and priories of the south of France are perhaps not more numerous, nor yet more grand, than elsewhere, but they bring one to-day into more intimate association with their past.
The "Gallia-Monasticum" enumerates many score of these establishments as having been situated in these parts. Many have passed away, but many still exist.
Among the first of their kind were those founded by St. Hilaire at Poitiers and St. Martin at Tours. The great Burgundian pride was the Abbey of Cluny; much the largest and perhaps as grand as any erected in any land. Its church covered over seventy thousand square feet of area, nearly equalling in size the cathedrals at Amiens and at Bourges, and larger than either those at Chartres, Paris, or Reims. This great church was begun in 1089, was dedicated in 1131, and endured for more than seven centuries. To-day but a few small fragments remain, but note should be made of the influences which spread from this great monastic establishment throughout all Europe; and were second only to those of Rome itself.
