The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine Part 27

The bishopric was founded by Heraclius in 968, and a church, of which the present choir is a part, was built upon the site of the present St.

Paul's in the thirteenth century. The see was formerly a suffragan of Cologne, and the only bishopric in the Low Countries except Tournai and Utrecht.

The present cathedral is consistently enough a Gothic church, but it is not a satisfactory example, in spite of its magnificent proportions.

Of a cruciform plan, and with a nave which was only completed in 1528, it is a poor apology for a great Gothic church, such as we know at Metz, Nancy, or even at Brussels.

Its western tower, satisfactory enough in itself, is crowned with a ludicrous spire, which dates only from 1812.

Since St. Lambert's has disappeared, and the present St. Paul's dates only from the ante-Revolutionary days, the chief ecclesiastical treasure of the city is the eglise St. Jacques. It was founded in 1014 by the Bishop Baudry II., but the Romanesque tower to the west is of the century following, and the whole fabric was very much modified in 1513-38.

It is a magnificent flamboyant Gothic church of quite the first rank, when compared with others of its kind elsewhere.

It has an ample nave and aisles with a polygonal choir and a series of radiating chapels which are singularly beautiful.

The magnificent north portal is an addition of the sixteenth century.

The interior has been called Spanish in its motive. Certainly it is not quite like any other Gothic forms we know in these parts, and does bear some resemblance to that peculiar variety of Gothic which belongs to Spain.

The choir has some fine gla.s.s showing the armorial bearings of former patrons of the church.

There is a beautiful carved stone staircase and much sculptured stonework in the choir.

The organ-buffet is ornate, even of its kind,--a masterpiece of cabinet-making,--and was the work of Andre Severin of Maestricht in 1673.

The left transept, which is some thirty feet longer than the right, has a fine painting of a "Mater Dolorosa," while, opposite, is a stone monument to the founder of the church, Baudry II., of Renaissance workmans.h.i.+p.

St. Jean is another pre-tenth-century foundation of the Bishop Notger, somewhat after the plan of the "round church" at Aix-la-Chapelle. It was entirely rebuilt, however, in the eighteenth century, though the original octagon was kept intact.

At some distance from the city, on a height which may be truly called dominating, is the church of St. Martin, founded in 962, and reconstructed, after the Gothic manner of the time, contemporary with St. Jacques. Of recent times it has been restored. If any separation or division of its parts can be made, one concludes that the choir is German, and its nave French.

In 1246 there was held in this church a _Fete Dieu_ following upon a vision of Ste. Julienne, the abbess of Cornillon near Liege. The fete was ordained by Pope Urbain IV., who himself had been a canon of the cathedral of Liege.

Ste. Croix was another of Notger's foundations, in 979, on the site of an ancient chateau.

The choir was built toward 1175, and has an octagonal tower with a gallery of small columns just under the roof, after the manner known as distinctly Rhenish.

The church exhibits thoroughly that Rhine manner of building which made combined use of the Gothic and Romanesque,--in bewildering fas.h.i.+on, to one who has previously known only the comparatively pure types of France.

The nave and its aisles rise to the same height, but the apsidal choir is aisleless.

The general effect of the interior is light and graceful, with circular columns in a blue-gray stone, which is very beautiful.

A series of fourteenth or fifteenth century "Stations of the Cross" fill the arches of the transepts; quite an unusual arrangement of this feature, and one which seems well considered.

St. Barthelemy's is Liege's other great church. It is a _basilica_ of five naves and two Romanesque towers. It dates in reality from the twelfth century, but has been greatly modernized.

St. Barthelemy's might have been a highly interesting example of a Romanesque church had it not been desecrated by late Italian details.

St. Barthelemy's has a twelfth-century art treasure in a brazen font, cast in 1112 by Patras, a bra.s.s-founder of Dinant on the Meuse. Its bowl depicts five baptismal scenes in high relief, each accompanied by a descriptive legend. Upon the rim of the bowl is the following legend:

"_Bissenis bobus pastorum forma notatur, Quos et apostolice commendat gratia vite, Officiiq; gradus quo fluminis impetus bujus Letificat sanctam purgatis civibus urbem._"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XXIX

DuSSELDORF, NEUSS, AND MuNCHEN-GLADBACH

_Dusseldorf_

Among aesthetic people in general, Dusseldorf is revered--or was revered, though the time has long since pa.s.sed--for that style of pictorial art known to the world as the Dusseldorf School.

A remarkably good collection of pictures remains in its art gallery to remind us of the fame of Dusseldorf as an art centre, but to-day its art has become "old-fas.h.i.+oned," and the gay little metropolis has many, if more worldly, counter attractions.

Dusseldorf takes its name from the little river Dussel which joins the Rhine at this point.

The French guide-books call Dusseldorf the "_plus coquettes des bords du Rhin_"; and so it really is, for few tourists go there for its churches alone, though they are by no means squalid or inferior.

The city was the residence of the Counts, afterward the Dukes, of Berg--for it was made a duchy by the Emperor Wenceslaus--from the end of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth.

In 1806 Napoleon made it the capital of a new Grand Duchy of Berg in favour of Joachim Murat. By the treaty of 1815 Dusseldorf fell to Prussia, and became the chief town of the regency of Dusseldorf, and the seat of a superior court of justice.

Occupying the site that it does, on the banks of a great waterway, the city naturally became the centre of an important commerce.

Dusseldorf is the birthplace of many who have borne great names; of the philosopher Jacobi and his poet brother; the Baron de Hompesch, the last grand master of the Order of Malta; Von Ense, the eminent litterateur; the poet Heinrich Heine (who died at Paris in 1855), and the painters Cornelius, Lenzen, and Achenbach.

The princ.i.p.al church edifice is that dedicated to St. Lambert, the Hofkirche. It has a strong and hardy tower, very tall, and surmounted by a slate-covered spire. The ogival style predominates, and the fabric dates mostly from the fourteenth century. Its chief feature is its choir, which is far more ample and beautiful than the nave. The rest of the edifice fails to express any very high ideals of church-building.

At the foot of the apside, behind the choir, is a mausoleum erected in the seventeenth century for the elector, John Wilhelm, who died in 1690.

In the ambulatory of the choir is, on the left, a florid Gothic tabernacle, and by the second pillar of the nave is a colossal statue of St. Christopher. There are many tombs of Jacobeans, and of the Dukes of Berg.

There are also a number of paintings by Dusseldorf artists scattered about the church, but they have not the qualities exhibited by the old Flemish masters, and are hardly worthy of remark.

On the exterior of the southern wall is affixed an immense Calvary, which is theatrical in the extreme, and is not dignified nor churchly.

The Jesuit church is not remarkable architecturally, but there are a number of tombs therein of the princes of the house of Neubourg.

The ruins of the ancient chateau of Dusseldorf suggest but faintly its former glories before it was destroyed by the French bombardment of the city in the eighteenth century.

It has been restored, in a way, but with little regard for historical traditions, and a part of the edifice was made the home of the famous Dusseldorf academy of painting, founded in 1777 by Charles Theodore and reestablished in 1822. It gave birth to a celebrated school of painting, now all but dead. Among the famous and well-known names connected therewith are: Cornelius, Schadow, Lessing, Schirmer, Hildebrand, and Koehler; the American, Lentzen; the Norwegians, Tiedemann and Gude; the landscape painters, Weber and Fay; and the historical painters, Knaus, Hubner, and Scheuren; and finally the celebrated engraver, Keller.

The museum and the gallery of paintings are still superb, and form a contribution to the history of the art of all ages which would be quite incomplete without it.

There are ten churches in Dusseldorf, and a synagogue, but in truth there is not much of interest in them all, and the "handsomest city of Germany" must rest its fame on something more than its appeal to the lover of churches.