The Cathedrals Of Southern France Part 2

Only the Aquitanians, south of the Loire, and the Burgundians on the Rhone, 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 Perigueux, 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 a.s.sured 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, Perigord, 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 Rhone) 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 a.s.serted 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 Nimes 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 s.h.i.+fting 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, Lucon, 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 cures, were suppressed. This ruling applied as well to all collegiate churches, secular bodies, and abbeys and priories generally.

Many were, of course, reestablished 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Concordat_ (_From Napoleon's Tomb_)]

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 ma.s.se_ 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 ma.s.s.

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 a.s.sumption 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 inst.i.tutions, 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-Perigord, Bishop of Autun, was a member of the National a.s.sembly, 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 ma.s.sacres 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 G.o.d, 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 Const.i.tutionalists.

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 archaeologists, historians, and the antiquarians, whose food is anything and everything so long as it reeks of antiquity.