Entrevaux.People gather around the mail-coach as itmakes its daily halt before the drawbridge.[To List]
“In the most honourable sense of the word,” the Cathedral of Marseilles is also typical of the city, “parvenue.” Its first stone was placed by Prince Louis Napoleon in1852, and as the modern has overgrown the classic and mediæval greatness of Marseilles, so the new “Majeure” has eclipsed, if it has not yet entirely replaced, the old Cathedral; and except the stern Abbey-church of Saint-Victor, an almost solitary relic of true mediæval greatness, it is the finest church of the city.
“THE NEW CATHEDRAL.”—MARSEILLES.[To List]
The new Cathedral and the old stand side by side; the one strong and whole, the other partly torn down, scarred and maimed as a veteran who has survived many wars. Even in its ruin, it is an interesting type of the maritime Provençal church, but so pitiably overshadowed by its successor that the charm of its situation is quite lost, and few will linger to study its three small naves, the defaced fresco of the dome, or even the little chapel of Saint-Lazare, all white marble and carving and small statues, scarcely more than a shallow niche in the wall, but daintily proportioned, and a charming creation of the Renaissance. Fewer still of those who pause to study what remains of the old “Majeure,” will stay to reconstruct it as it used to be, and realise that it had its day of glory no less real than that of the new church which replaces it. In its stead, Saint-Martin's, and Saint-Cannat's sometimes called “the Preachers,” have been temporarily used for the Bishop's services. But now that the greater church, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, has been practically completed, it has assumed, once and for all, the greater rank, and a Cathedral of Marseilles still stands on its terrace in full view of the sea. Tradition has it that a Temple of Baal once stood on this site and later, a Temple to Diana; that Lazaruscame in the I century, converted the pagan Marseillais and built a Christian Cathedral here. A more critical tradition says that Saint Victor first came as missionary, Bishop, and builder. All these vague memories of conversion, more or less accurate, all the legends of an humble and struggling Christianity, seem buried by this huge modern mass. It is not a church struggling and militant, but the Church Established and Triumphant. It is a vast building over four hundred and fifty feet long, preceded by two domed towers. Its transepts are surmounted at the crossing by a huge dome whose circumference is nearly two hundred feet, a smaller one over each transept arm, and others above the apsidal chapels. The exterior is built with alternate layers of green Florentine stone and the white stone of Fontvieille; and the style of the church, variously called French Romanesque, Byzantine, and Neo-Byzantine, is very oriental in its general effect.
An arcade between the two towers forms a porch, the entrance to the interior whose central nave stretches out in great spaciousness. The lateral naves, in contrast, are exceedingly narrow and have high galleries supported by large monolithic columns. These naves are prolonged into an ambulatory, each of whose chapels, in consonance with the Cathedral's colossal proportions, is as large as many a church. The building stone of the interior is grey and pink, with white marble used decoratively for capitals and bases; and these combinations of tints which would seem almost too delicate, too effeminate, for so large a building, are made rich and effective by their very mass,the gigantic sizes which the plan exacts. All that artistic conception could produce has been added to complete an interior that is entirely oriental in its luxury of ornamentation, half-oriental in style, and without that sober majesty which is an inherent characteristic of the most elaborate styles native to Western Christianity. Under the gilded dome is a rich baldaquined High Altar, and through the whole church there is a magnificence of mosaics, of mural paintings, and of stained glass that is sumptuous. Mosaics line the arches of the nave and the pendentives, and form the flooring; and in the midst of this richness of colour the grey pillars rise, one after the other in long, shadowy perspective, like the trees of a stately grove.
In planning this new Provençal Cathedral its architects did not attempt to reproduce, either exactly or in greater perfection, any maritime type which its situation on the Mediterranean might have suggested, nor were they inspired by any of the models of the native style; and perhaps, to the captious mind, its most serious defect is that its building has destroyed not only an actual portion of the old Majeure, but an historic interest which might well have been preserved by a wise restoration or an harmonious re-building. And yet, with the large Palace of the Archbishop on the Port de la Joliette near-by, the statue of a devoted and loving Bishop in the open square, and the majestic Cathedral of Sainte-Marie-Majeure itself, the episcopacy of Marseilles has all the outward and visible signs of strength and glory and power.
Toulon.
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Toulon, although a foundation of the Romans, owes its rank to-day to Henry IV, to Richelieu, and to Louis XIV's busy architect, Vauban. It is the “Gibraltar of France,” a bright, bustling, modern city. Sainte-Marie-Majeure, one of its oldest ecclesiastical names, is a title which belonged to churches of both the XI and XII centuries; but in the feats of architectural gymnastics to which their remains have been subjected, and in the wars and vicissitudes of Provence, these buildings have long since disappeared.
A few stones still exist of the XI century structure, void of form or architectural significance, and the ancient name of Sainte-Marie-Majeure now protects a Cathedral built in the most depressing style of the industrious Philistines of the XVII and XVIII centuries. It is not a Provençal nor a truly “maritime” church, it is not a fortress nor a defence, nor a work of any architectural beauty. It has blatancy, size, pretension,—a profusion of rich incongruities; and although religiously interesting from its chapels and shrines, it is architecturally obtrusive and monstrous.
The vagaries of the architects who began in 1634 to construct the present edifice, are well illustrated in the changes of plan to which they subjected this unfortunate church. The length became the breadth, the isolated chapel of the Virgin, part of the main building; the choir, another chapel; and the High Altar was removed from the eastern to the northern end, where a new choir had been built for its reception. This confusion of plan was carried out with logical confusion of style and detail. The façade hasCorinthian columns of the XVII century; the nave is said to be “transition Gothic,” the choir is decorated with mural paintings, and the High Altar, a work of Révoil, adds to the banalities of the XVII and XVIII centuries a rich incongruity of which the XIX has no reason to be proud. The whole interior is so full of naves of unequal length, and radiating chapels, of arches of differing forms, tastes, and styles, that it defies concise description and is unworthy of serious consideration. Provence has modest Cathedrals of small architectural significance, but except Sainte-Réparate of Nice, it has none so chaotic and commonplace as Sainte-Marie-Majeure of Toulon.
Fréjus.
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Fréjus, which claims to be “the oldest city in France,” was one of the numerous trading ports of the Phœnician, and later, during the period of her civic grandeur, an arsenal of the Roman navy. Her most interesting ruins are the Coliseum, the Theatre, the old Citadel, and the Aqueduct, suggestions of a really great city of the long-gone past. Fréjus lost prestige with the decadence of the Empire, and after a destruction by the Saracens in the X century, Nature gave the blow which finally crushed her when the sea retreated a mile, and her old Roman light-house was left to overlook merely a long stretch of barren, sandy land. Owing to this stranded, inland position, she has escaped both the dignity of a modern sea-port and the prostitution of a Rivieran resort, and is a little dead city, the seat of an ancient Provençal “Cathedral of the Sea.” This Cathedral islargely free from XVII and XVIII century disfigurements; and the pity is that having escaped this, a French church's imminent peril, it should have become so built around that the character of the exterior is almost lost. The façade is severely plain, an uninteresting re-building of 1823, but the carved wood of its portals is beautiful. The towers, as in other maritime Cathedrals of Provence, recall the perils and dangers of their days; and these towers of Fréjus, although none the less practically defensive, have a more churchly appearance than those of Antibes, Grasse, and Vence. Over the vestibuled entrance rises the western tower. Its heavy, rectangular base is the support of a super-structure which was replaced in the XVI century by one more in keeping with conventional ecclesiastical models. Then the windows of the base, whose rounded arches are still traceable, were walled in; and the new octagonal stage with high windows of its own was completed by a tile-covered spire. The more interesting tower is that which surmounts the apse. This was the lookout, facing the sea, the really vital defence of the church. Its upper room was a storage place for arms and ammunition, and on the side which faces the city was open, with a broad, pointed arch. Above, the tower ends in machiolated battlements and presents a very strong and stern front seaward, perhaps no stronger, but more artistic and grim than towers of other Provençal Cathedrals.
The entrance of the church is curiously complicated. To the left is the little baptistery; directly before one, a narrow stairway which leads to the Cloister; and on theright, a low-arched vestibule which opens into the nave of the Cathedral. The interior of Saint-Etienne is dark and somewhat gloomy, but that is an inherent trait of a fortress-church, for every added inch of window-opening brought an ell of danger. The nave is unusually low and broad, and its buttressed piers are of immense weight, ending severely in a plain, moulded band. On these great piers rest the cross-vaults of the roof and the broad arches of the wall. The north aisle, disproportionately narrow, is a later addition. Behind the altar is a true Provençal apse, shallow and rectangular, and beyond its rounded roof opens the smaller half-dome. Architecturally, this is an interesting interior; but the traveller who has not time to spend in musings will fail to see it in its original intention;—cold, severely plain, heavy, with perhaps too many arch-lines, but sober and simple. A futile wooden wainscot now surrounds the church and breaks its wall space, liberal coats of whitewash conceal the building material, and taking from the church the severity of its stone, give it an appearance of poor deprecatory bareness.
“THE DESECRATION OF THE LITTLE CLOISTER.”—FRÉJUS.[To List]
Near the entrance of the Cathedral is its most ancient portion, the baptistery, formerly a building apart, but now an integral part of the church itself. It is perhaps the most interesting Christian monument in Fréjus, a reminder of those early centuries when, in France as in Italy, the little baptistery was the popular form of Christian architectural expression. Here it has the very usual octagonal shape; the arches are upheld by grayish columns of granite with capitals of white marble, and in the centre stands the font.Between the columns are small recesses, alternately rectangular and semi-domed, and above all, is a modern dome and lantern. Structurally interesting, and reminiscent of the stately baptistery of Aix, the effect of this little chamber, like the church's interior, is marred by the whitewashes from whose industrious brushes nothing but the grayish columns have escaped. And here again, the traveller who would see the builders' work, free from the disfigurements of time, must pause and imagine.
Yet even imagination seems powerless before the desecration of the little Cloister. Charming it must have been to have entered its quiet walks, with their slender columns of white marble, to have seen the quaint old well in the little, sun-lit close. Now, between the slender columns, boards have been placed which shut out light and sun. The traveller sat down on an old wheel-barrow, waiting till he could see in the dim and misty light. All around him was forgetfulness of the Cloister's holy uses; signs of desecration and neglect. One end of the cloister-walk was a thoroughfare, where the wheel-barrow had worn its weary way; and even in the deserted corners there was the dust and dirt of a work-a-day world. The beautiful little capitals of the slender columns rose from among the boards, clipped and worn; above, he dimly saw the curious wooden ceiling which would seem to have taken the place of the usual stone vaulting; through chinks of the plank-wall he caught glimpses of a little close; and at length, having seen the most melancholy of “Cathedrals of the Sea,” in its disguise of whitewash, decay, and misuse, he went his way.
Antibes.
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That part of the southern coast of France called the Riviera seems now only to evoke visions of the most beautiful banality; of a life more artificial than the stage—which at least aims to present reality—transplanted to a scene of such incomparable loveliness that Nature herself adds a new and exquisite sumptuousness to the luxury of civilisation. The Riviera means a land of many follies and every vice;—each folly so delicious, each vice so regal, they seem to be sought and desired of all men. Where else can be seen in such careless magnificence Dukes of Russia with their polish of manner and their veiled insolence; Englishmen correct and blasé; Americans a bit vociferous and truly amused; great ladies of all ages and manners; adventurers high and low; and the beautiful, sparkling women of no name, bravely dressed and barbarously jewelled? Such is the Riviera of to-day; the life imposed upon it by hordes of foreign idlers in a land whose warmth and luxuriance may have lent itself but too easily to the vicious and frivolous pleasures for which they have made it notorious, but a land which has no native history that is effeminate, nor any so unworthy as its exotic present. “The Riviera” may be Nice, Beaulieu, and their like, but the Provençal Mediterranean and its neighbouring territory have been the fatherland of warriors in real mail and of princes of real power, of the Emperor Pertinax of pagan times, of those who fought successfully against Mahmoud and Tergament, and of many Knights of Malta, long the “Forlorn Hope” of Christendom.
Discreetly hidden from vulgar eyes that delight in the architecture of the modern caravanserai, are the ruins of these older days—Amphitheatres, Fountains, Temples, and Aqueducts of the Romans; the Castles, Abbeys, and Cathedrals of mediæval times. Here are the larger number, if not the most interesting, of those curious churches of the sea, which protected the French townsman of the Mediterranean coast from the rapacity of sea-rovers and pirates, and many more orthodox enemies of the Middle Ages.
From the great beauty of its situation, the small city of Antibes is at once a type of the old régime and of the new. Lying on the sea, with a background of snow-capped mountains, it has not entirely escaped the fate of Nice; neither has it yet lost all its old Provençal characteristics. It is a pathetic compromise between the quaint reality of the old and the blatancy of the new. The little parish church is of the very far past, having lost its Cathedral rank over six hundred years ago to Sainte-Marie in Grasse, a town scarcely younger than its own. It is the type of the church of this coast, with its unpretentious smallness, its strength, and its disfiguring restorations; and it is, especially in comparison with Vence and Grasse, of small architectural interest. The façade, and the double archway which connects the church and the tower, are of the unfortunate XVIII century, the older exterior is monotonous, and the interior, an unpleasing confusion of forms.
“THE MILITARY OMEN—THE TOWER.” ANTIBES.[To List]
The real interest of the little Cathedral is its ancient military strength, neither very grand nor very imposing, but very real to the enemy who hundreds of years ago hurledhimself against the hard, plain stones. From this view-point, the mannered façade and the inharmonious interior matter but little. Toward the foe, whose sail might have arisen on the horizon at any moment, the protecting church presented the heavy rounded walls and safely narrowed windows of its three apses, and behind them the military omen of the severe, rectangular tower. High in every one of its four sides, seaward and landward, was a window, from which many a watcher must have looked and strained anxious eyes. This is the significance of the little sea-side Cathedral, this the story its tower suggests. And now when the sea is sailed by peaceful ships, and the Cathedral only a place of pious worship, the tower with its gaping windows is the onlysalient reminder of the ancient dignity of the church; the reminder to an indifferent generation of the days when Antibes fulfilled to Christians the promise of her old, pagan name, Antipolis, “sentinel” of the perilous sea.
Nice.
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The situation of its Cathedral reveals a Nice of which but little is written, the city of a people who live in the service of those whose showy, new villas and hotels stretch along the promenades and lie dotted on the hills in the Nice of “all the world.” Besides this exotic city, there is “the Nice of the Niçois,” a small district of dark, crowded streets that are too full of the sordid struggles of competing work-people to be truly picturesque. Here, in the XVI century, when the Citadel of Nice was enlarged and the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie-de-l'Assomption destroyed, the Church of Sainte-Réparate was re-built, and succeeded to the episcopal rank. Standing on a little open square, surrounded by small shops and the poor homes of trades-folk, it seems in every sense a church of the people. Here the native Niçois, gay, industrious, mercurial, and dispossessed of his town, may feel truly at home. Finished in the most exuberant rococo style, it is an edifice from which all architectural or religious inspiration is conspicuously absent. It is a revel of luxurious bad taste; a Cathedral in Provence, a Cathedral by the Sea, but neither Provençal nor Maritime,—rather a product of that Italian taste which has so profoundly vitiated both the morals and the architecture of all the Riviera.
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Carpentras.
Carpentras is a busy provincial town, the terminus of three diminutive railroads and of many little, lumbering, dust-covered stages. It stands high on a hill, and from the boulevards, dusty promenades under luxuriant shade-trees, which circle the town as its walls formerly did, there is an extended view over the pretty hills and valleys of the neighbouring country. At one end of the town the Hospital rises, an immense, bare, and imposing edifice of the XVIII century, built by a Trappist Bishop; and at the other is the Orange Gate, the last tower of the old fortifications. Between these historic buildings and the encircling boulevards are the narrow streets and irregular, uninteresting buildings of the city itself. It is strange indeed that so isolated a place, which seems only a big, bustling country-town, should have been of importance in the Middle Ages, and that bits of its stirring history must have caused all orthodox Europe to thrill with horror. Stranger still would be the forgetfulness of modern writers, by whom Carpentras is seldom mentioned, were it not that the city's real history is that of the Church political, a story of strange manners and happenings, rather than a step in the vital evolution towards our own time.
In the Middle Ages Carpentras was an episcopal city, the capital of the County Venaissin, governed by wealthy, powerful, and ambitious Bishops, who took no small interest in worldly aggrandisement. Passing by gift to the Papacy, after the sudden death of Clement V it was selected as the place of the Conclave which was to elect his successor. The members were assembled in the great episcopal Palace, when Bertrand de Goth, a nephew of the dead Pope, claiming to be an ally of the French prelates against the Italians in the Conclave, arrived from a successful looting of the papal treasury at Montreux to pillage in Carpentras. He and his mercenaries massacred the citizens and burned the Cathedral. The episcopal Palace caught fire, and their Eminences—in danger of their lives—were forced to squeeze their sacred persons through a hole which their followers made in the Palace wall and fly northward.
This unfortunate raid left Carpentras with many ruins and a demolished Cathedral, deserted by those in whose cause she had unwittingly suffered. The new Pontiff was safely elected in Lyons, and upon his return to the papal seat of Avignon he administered Carpentras by a “rector,” and it continued as it had been before, the political capital of the County. During the reigns of succeeding Popes it was apparently undisturbed by dangerous honours, until the accession of the Anti-Pope, Benedict XIII. So great was this prelate's delight in the city that he reserved to himself the minor title of her Bishop, re-built her walls, and was the first patron of the present and very orthodox Cathedral, Saint-Siffrein. By a curious destiny, the churchhad this false prelate not only as its first patron, but as its first active supporter; and in 1404 he sent Artaud, Archbishop of Arles, in his name, to lay its first stone.
Wars and rumours of wars soon possessed the province. Benedict fled, and through unrest and lack of money the work of Cathedral building was greatly hindered. In the meantime the ruins of the former Cathedral seem to have been gradually disintegrating, and in 1829 the last of its Cloister was destroyed, to be replaced by prison cells; and now only the choir dome and a suggestion of the nave exist, partly forming the present sacristy. From these meagre remains and from writings of the time, it may be fairly inferred that Saint-Pierre was a Cathedral of the type of Avignon and Cavaillon and the old Marseillaise Church of La Majeure, and that, architecturally considered, it was a far more important structure than Saint-Siffrein. With this depressing knowledge in mind the traveller was confronted with a sight as depressing—the present Cathedral itself.
Fortunately, churches of a period antedating the XVII century are seldom so uninteresting. Nothing more meagre nor dreary can be conceived than the façade with its three, poor, characterless portals. They open on a large vaulted hall, with chapels in its six bays and a small and narrow choir. The principal charm of the interior is negative; its dim misty light, by concealing a mass of tasteless decorations and the poverty and bareness of the whole architectural scheme, gives to the generous height and size of the room an atmosphere of subdued and mysterious spaciousness.The south door is the one bit of this Gothic which passes the commonplace. Set in a poor, plain wall, the portal has a graceful symmetry of design; and its few carved details, probably limited by the artistic power of its builder, are so simple and chaste that they do not inevitably suggest poverty of conception. The tympanum holds an exotic detail, a defaced and insignificant fresco of the Coronation of the Virgin; and on the pier which divides the door-way stands a very charming statue of Our Lady of Snows, blessing those who enter beneath her outstretched hands.
This simple portal, and indeed the whole church, is a significant example of Provençal Gothic, a style so foreign to the genius of the province that it could produce only feeble and attenuated examples of the art. Compared with its northern prototypes, it is surprisingly tentative; and awkward, unaccustomed hands seem to have built it after most primitive conceptions.
Digne.
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Well outside the Alpine city of Digne, and almost surrounded by graves, stands a small and ancient church which is seldom opened except for the celebration of Masses for the Dead. Coffin-rests stand always before the altar, and enough chairs for the few that mourn. There are old candlesticks for the tapers of the church's poor, and hidden in the shadows of the doors, a few broken crosses that once marked graves, placed, tenderly perhaps, above those who were alive some years ago and who now rest forgotten;on battered wood, one can still read a baby's age, an old man's record, and the letters R. I. P.
In this strange, melancholy destiny of Notre-Dame-du-Bourg there seems to be a peculiar fitness. The mutability of time, forgetfulness, and at length neglect, which death suggests, are brought to mind by this old church. Once the Cathedral of Digne, but no longer Cathedral, it stands almost alone in spite of its honours and its venerable age. After the desecration by the Huguenots, its episcopal birthright was given to a younger and a larger church; the city has moved away and clusters about its new Cathedral, Saint-Jérome; and Notre-Dame-du-Bourg is no longer on a busy street, but near the dusty high-road, amid the quiet of the country and the hills.
Parts of its crypt and tower may antedate 900, but the church itself was re-built in the XII and XIII centuries. The course of time has brought none of the incongruities which have ruined many churches by the so-called restorations of the last three hundred years, and although its simple Romanesque is sadly unrepaired, it is a delight to come into the solitude and find an unspoiled example of this stanch old style.
“THE INTERIOR OF NOTRE-DAME-DU-BOURG.”—DIGNE.[To List]
The Romanesque shows forth its great solidity in the exterior of its churches, and nowhere more than in Digne's deserted Cathedral. Flat buttresses line the walls, the transepts are square and plain, and on either side the façade wall is upheld by a formidable support. This severity of line is not greatly modified by the deep recesses of a few windows; nor is the tower—which lost its spirethree hundred years ago—of less sober construction, less solidly built. Below the overhanging eaves of a miserable roof and the curious line of the nave vault which projects through the wall, is a round window with a frame of massive rolls and hollows; and below this again, under a narrow sloping covering, is the deep arch of the Cathedral's porch. This, in its prime, must have been the church's ornamental glory. Beneath the outer arch, which is continued to the buttresses by half-arches, are the great roll-mouldings that twist backward to a plain tympanum. Capitals still support these massive curves of stone, but the niches in which the columns formerly stood are empty, and grinning lions, lying on the ground, no longer support the larger columns of the plain arch. All stands in solemn decay.
The traveller entered a battered, brass-nailed door and saw before him the stretch of a single, empty nave, a choir beneath whose lower vault are three small windows, and on either side the archways which he knew must lead to narrow transepts. In the south side, plain, rounded windows give a glimmering light, and over each projects an arch, the modest decoration of the walls. Far above rises the tunnel-vault, whose sheer height is grandly dignified; the arches rest on roughly carved capitals, and the outer rectangle of the piers is displaced for half a column. The rehearsal of these most simple details seems but the writing of “the letter which killeth,” and not the portrayal of the spirit that seems to live within these walls. Details which seem so poorly few when read, are nobly so when seen.This small old church has a true religious stateliness, and it seemed as if a priest should bring the Sanctuary-light which says, “The Lord is in His holy temple.”
Saint-Jérome was built between 1490 and 1500, a hundred years before its episcopal elevation, and forms a most complete antithesis to Notre-Dame-du-Bourg which it supplanted in 1591. Where Notre-Dame is small, Saint-Jérome is large, where the old church is simple, the newer one is either pretentious or sumptuous, and where the one is Romanesque, the other is Gothic.
The present Cathedral stands on the heights of the city; and from one side or another its clean, straight walls can be seen in all their large angularity and absence of architectural significance. Towers rise conventionally above the façade; and a big broad flight of white stone steps leads to three modern portals that have been built in an economical imitation of the sculptured richness of the XIII century.
The interior, also Gothic, has neither clerestory nor triforium, and its naves are covered by a vaulting which springs broadly from the round, supporting piers. The conception is not noble, it has no simplicity, and no more of spiritual suggestion than a Madonna of Titian; but the space of the nave is so largely generous and the new polychrome so richly toned that the church has majesty of space and harmony, deep lights and subdued colourings; it is large and sumptuous with the munificence of a Veronese canvas, a singular and most curious contrast to the cold severity of its outer walls.
“THE INTERIOR HAS NEITHER CLERESTORY NOR TRIFORIUM.”—DIGNE.[To List]
Before the High Altar of this Church lies buried one whose spirit suggests the Christ, a Bishop, yet a simple priest, whose life deserves more words than does the whole of Saint-Jérome, once his Cathedral-church. He was a Curé of Brignoles, one of those keen, yet simple-hearted and hard-working priests who often bless Provençal towns. He had no great ambitions, no patronage, no ties except a far-off brother who was an upstart general of that most upstart Emperor, Napoleon. One day while the priest was pottering in his little garden,—as Provençal Curés love to dig and work,—a letter was handed him, marked “thirty sous of postage due.” He was outraged. His shining old soutanefell from the folds in which he had prudently tucked it, he shrugged his shoulders and protested,—“A great expense indeed for a trivial purpose. Where should he find another thirty sous for his poor? He never wrote letters. Therefore by no argument of any school of logic could he be compelled to receive them. Obviously this was not for him.” The unexpected letter was one for which his brother had asked and which Napoleon had signed, a decree which made him Bishop.
Long afterwards this simple, saintly prelate saved a man from crime, and history relates that this same man died at Waterloo as a good and faithful soldier fighting for the fatherland. His benefactor, that loyal servant of Christ and His Church, soon followed him in death, and unlike many a Saint whom this earth forgets his memory lives on, not only in the little city of the snow-clad Alps, but in the hearts of those who read of his good deeds. For Monseigneur Miollis of Digne is truly Monseigneur Bienvenu of “Les Misérables,” and only the soldier of Waterloo was glorified in Jean Valjean.
Forcalquier.
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If it is difficult to picture sleepy, stately Aix as one of the most brilliant centres of mediæval Europe, and the garrisoned castle of Tarascon filled with the gay courtiers and fair ladies of King René's Court, it will be almost impossible to walk in the smaller Provençal “cities,” and see in imagination the cavalcades of mailed soldiers who clattered through the streets on their way to the castle of somenear-by hill-top, my lord proudly distinguishable by his mount or the length of his plume, a delicate Countess languishing between the curtains of her litter, or a more sprightly one who rode her palfrey and smiled on the staring townsfolk. It is almost impossible to conceive that the four daughters of Raymond Bérenger, a Queen of the Romans, of France, of Naples, and of England, were brought up in the castle of the little hillside hamlet of Saint-Maime Dauphin. Provence is quiet, rural, provincial; a land of markets, busy country inns, and farms; not of modern greatness nor of modern renown. Its children are a fine and busy race, no less strong and fine than in the land's more stirring times, but they live their years of greatness in other, “more progressive” parts of France, and the Provençal genius, which remains very native to the soil, is broadly known to fame as “French.” Like some rich old wine hidden in the cellars of the few, Provence lies safely ensconced behind Avignon and Arles, and only the epicures of history penetrate her hills.
Her mediæval ruins seem to belong to a past almost as dead and ghostly as her Roman days, and to realise her Middle Ages, one must leave the busy people in the town below, climb one of the hills, and sitting beside the crumbling walls of some great tower or castle, watch the hot sun setting behind the low mountains and lighting in a glow the bare walls of some other ruined stronghold on a neighbouring height. The shadows creep into the valleys, the rocks grow grey and cold, and the clusters of trees beside them become darkly mysterious. Then far beneath a whitethread seems to appear, beginning at the valley's entrance and twisting along its length until it disappears behind another hill. This is the road; and by the time the eye has followed its long course, daylight has grown fainter. Then Provence takes on a long-lost splendour. To those who care to see, cavalcades of soldiers or of hunters come home along the road, castles become whole and frowning, the dying sun casts its light through their gaping window-holes, as light of nightly revels used to shine, and a phantom Mediævalism appears.
One of the powerful families of the country, the Counts of Forcalquier, sprang from the House of Bérenger in the XI century, and a hundred and fifty years later, grown too great, were crushed by the haughty parent house. More than one hill of Eastern Provence has borne their tall watchtowers, more than one village owed them allegiance, and a large town in the hills was their capital and bore their name. And yet not a ruined tower that overlooks the Provençal mountains, not a village, gate, or castle—Manosque or old Saint-Maime,—but speaks more vividly of the old Counts than does Forcalquier, formerly their city, now a mere country town which has lost prestige with its increasing isolation, many of its inhabitants by plagues and wars, and almost all of its picturesque Mediævalism through the destructiveness of sieges.
Long before this day of contented stagnancy, in 1061, when Forcalquier, fortified, growing, and important, claimed many honours, Bishop Gérard Caprérius of Sisteron had given the city a Provost and a Chapter, and created theChurch of Saint-Mary, co-cathedral with that of Notre-Dame of Sisteron. Not contented with this honour, Forcalquier demanded and received a Bishopric of her own. Her hill was then crowned by a Citadel, her Cathedral stood near-by, her walls were intact. Now the Citadel is replaced by a peaceful pilgrims' chapel, the walls are gone, Saint-Mary, ruined in the siege of 1486, is recalled only by a few weed-covered stumps and bits of wall, and its title was given to Notre-Dame in the lower part of the town.
“A LARGE, SQUARE TOWER SERVED AS A LOOK-OUT.”—FORCALQUIER.[To List]
No Cathedral is a sadder example of architectural failure than Notre-Dame of Forcalquier because it has so many of the beginnings of real beauty and dignity, so many parts of real worthiness that have been unfortunately combined in a confused and discordant whole. If, of all little cities of Provence, Forcalquier is one of the least unique and least holding, its Cathedral is also one of the least satisfying. It is not beautiful in situation nor in its own essential harmony, and the fine but tantalising perspectives of its interior may be found again in happier churches.
The exterior shows to a superlative degree that general tendency of Provençal exteriors to be without definite or logical proportions. A large, square tower, heavier than that of Grasse, served as a lookout, a tall, thin little turret served as a belfry. In the façade there is a Gothic portal which notwithstanding its entire mediocrity is the chief adornment of the outer walls. They are irregular and uncouth to a degree and their only interesting features are at the eastern end. Here the smaller, older apses oneither side betray the church's early origin. The central apse, evidently of the same dimensions as the Romanesque one originally designed, was re-built in severe, rudimentary Gothic. Looking at this shallow apse alone, and following its plain lines until they meet those of the big tower, there is a straight simplicity that is almost fine,—but this is one mere detail in a large and barren whole, and the Cathedral-seeker turns to the nearest entrance.
“A SUGGESTIVE VIEW FROM THE SIDE AISLE.”—FORCALQUIER.[To List]
The first glimpse of the interior is so relieving that one is not quick to notice its lack of architectural unity. The few windows give a soft light, and the brown of the stone has a mellowness that is both rich and reposeful. If the Cathedral could have been finished in the style of the first bays of the nave, it would have been a nobly dignified example of the Romanesque. Could it have been re-built in the slender Gothic of the last bay, it would have beenan exquisite example of Provençal Gothic. Rather largely planned, its old form of tunnel vaulting and the fine curve of its nave arches and heavy piers are in violent contrast to the Gothic bay, with its pointed arch, its clustered columns and carved capitals, which, even with the shallow choir and its long, slim windows, is too slight a portion of the Cathedral to have independence or real beauty. From its ritualistic position, it is the culminating point of the church, and its discord with the Romanesque is unpleasantlyinsistent. The side aisles, which were built in the XVII century, are low, agreeable walks ending in the chapels of the smaller apses. They are neither very regular nor very significant; but they give the church pleasant size and perspectives, and by avoiding the unduly large and shining modern chandeliers which hang between the nave arches, one gets from these side aisles the suggestive views which show only too well what true and good architectural ideas were brought to confusion in the re-building, the additions, and the restorations of the centuries. In painting, anachronisms may be quaint or even amusing; but in architecture, they are either grotesque or tragic, and in a church of such fine suggestiveness as Notre-Dame at Forcalquier, one is haunted by lingering regrets for what might and should have been.
Vence.
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A founder of the French Academy and one of its first immortal forty was Antoine Godeau, “the idol of the Hôtel Rambouillet.” His mind was formed, as it were, by one of the most clever women of that brilliantly foolish coterie, he sang frivolous sonnets to a beautiful red-haired mistress whom he sincerely admired, and when he entered Holy Church, none of his charming friends believed that he would do more than modify the proper and agreeable conventionalities of his former life. They thought that he would add to the grace of his worldly manner the suavity of the ecclesiastic, that he would choose a pulpit of Paris, and that, sitting at his feet, they could enjoy the elegant phrases with which he wouldembellish a refined and delicately attenuated religion. But an aged prelate of the far South judged the new priest differently, he had sounded the heart of the man who, at the age of thirty, had quietly renounced a flattering, admiring world; and his dying prayer to Richelieu was that Godeau should succeed him in the See of Vence. The keen worldly wisdom of the Cardinal confirmed the old Bishop's more spiritual insight, and Godeau was named Bishop of the neighbouring Grasse.
Far away in his mountain-city of flower gardens and sweet odours, the new Bishop wrote to his Parisian friends that, for his part, he “found more thorns than orange-blossoms.” The Calvinists, from the rock of Antibes, openly defied him; in spite of the vehement opposition of their Chapters and against his will, the Bishoprics of Grasse and Vence were united, and he was made the Bishop of the two warring, discontented Sees. He was stoned at Vence; and even his colleague in temporal power, the Marquis of Villeneuve, showed himself as insolent as he dared. At length the King came to his aid, and being given his choice of the Sees, Godeau immediately left “the perfumed wench,” as he called Grasse, and chose to live and work among his one-time enemies of Vence. This gentle and courageous prelate is typical of the long line of wise men who ruled the Church in the tight little city of the Provençal hills. From Saint Véran the wonder-worker, and Saint Lambert the tender nurse of lepers, to the end, they were men noted for bravery, goodness, and learning, and it was not till the Revolution that one was found—and fittingly the last—who, hating the “Oath” and fearing the guillotine, fled his See.
This city of good Bishops was founded in the dim, pagan past of Gaul. From a rocky hill-top, its inhabitants had watched the burning of their first valley-town and they founded the second Vence on that height of safety to which they had escaped with their lives. Here, far above the Aurelian road, the Gallic tribes had a strong and isolated camp. Then the prying Romans found them out, and priests of Mars and Cybele replaced those of the cruder native gods, and they, in turn, gave way to the apostle of the Christians. Where a temple stood, a church was built; and unlike many early saints who looked upon old pagan images as homes of devils and broke them into a thousand pieces with holy wrath and words of exorcism, the prelate of Vence buried an image of a vanquished god under each and every pillar of his church, in sign of Christian triumph.
These early days of the Faith were days of growth for the little city, and she prospered in her Mediævalism. High on her hill, she was too difficult of access to suffer greatly from marauding foes, and hidden from the sea, she did not excite the cupidity of the Mediterranean rovers. When Antibes and Nice were sacked, her little ledge of rock was safe; and people crowded thick and fast behind her walls, until no bee-hive swarmed so thick with bees as her few streets with citizens. Here were arts and occupations, burghers and charters, riches and liberties. Here came the Renaissance, and Vence had eager, if not famous sculptors,painters, and organ-builders, and a family of artists whom even the dilettante Francis I deigned to patronise.
Such memories of a busy, energetic past seem fairy-tales to those who walk to-day about the dark and narrow streets of Vence. She scarcely has outgrown her ancient walls, her civic life is dead, and in her virtual isolation from the modern world she lives a dreary, quiet old age.
The old Cathedral, Notre-Dame, lies in the heart of the town; and takes one back along the years, far past the Renaissance, to those grim mediæval days when even churches were places of defence. It is a low, unimpressive building, said to have been built on the site of the Roman Temple in the IV century. Enlarged or re-built in the X century, it was then long and narrow, a Latin cross. But in the XII century, deep, dark bays were added; in the XV, tribunes were built, the form of the apse was changed to an oval and it was decorated in an inharmonious style; and a hundred years ago the nave vault was re-built in an ellipse.