The Cathedrals Of Southern France Part 21

The cathedral of St. Jean is of a peculiar architectural style, locally known as "Chartreusian." It is by no means beautiful, but it is not unpleasing. It dates, as to the epoch of its distinctive style, from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, though it has been so fully restored in our day that it may as well be considered as a rebuilt structure, in spite of the consistent devotion to the original plan.

The chief features of note are to be seen in its interior, and, while they are perhaps not of extraordinary value or beauty, in any single instance, they form, as a whole, a highly interesting disposition of devout symbols.

Immediately within the portico, by which one enters from the west, is a plaster model of the tomb of Count Humbert, the head of the house of Savoie.

In the nave is an altar and mausoleum in marble, gold, and mosaic, erected by the Carthusians to St. Ayrald, a former bishop of the diocese and a member of their order.

In the left aisle of the nave is a tomb to Oger de Conflans, and another to two former bishops.

Through the sacristy, which is behind the chapel of the Sacred Heart, is the entrance to the cloister. This cloister, while not of ranking greatness or beauty, is carried out, in the most part, in the true pointed style of its era (1452), and is, on the whole, the most charming attribute of the cathedral.

The choir has a series of carved stalls in wood, which are unusually acceptable. In the choir, also, is a _ciborium_, in alabaster, with a _reliquaire_ which is said to contain three fingers of John the Baptist, brought to Savoie in the sixth century by Ste. Thecle.

The crypt, beneath the choir, is, as is most frequently the case, the remains of a still earlier church, which occupied the same site, but of which there is little record extant.

XXII

ST. PIERRE DE ST. CLAUDE

St. Claude is charmingly situated in a romantic valley of the Jura.

The sound of mill-wheels and the sight of factory chimneys mingle inextricably with the roaring of mountain torrents and the solitude of the pine forest.

The majority of the inhabitants of these valleys lead a simple and pastoral life, with cheese-making apparently the predominant industry.

Manufacturing of all kinds is carried on, in a small way, in nearly every hamlet--in tiny cottage _ateliers_--wood-carving, gem-polis.h.i.+ng, spectacle and clock-making, besides turnery and wood-working of all sorts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. PIERRE _de ST. CLAUDE_]

St. Claude, with its ancient cathedral of St. Pierre, is the centre of all these activities; which must suggest to all publicists of time-worn and _ennuied_ lands a deal of possibilities in the further application of such industrial energies as lie close at hand.

In 1789, when Arthur Young, in his third journey through France, pa.s.sed through St. Claude, the count-bishop of the diocese, the sole inheritor of its wealthy abbey foundation and all its seigneurial dependencies, had only just enfranchised his forty thousand serfs.

Voltaire, the atheist, pleaded in vain the cause of this Christian prelate, and for him to be allowed to sustain his right to bond-men; but opposition was too great, and they became free to enjoy property rights, could they but once acquire them. Previously, if childless, they had no power to bequeath their property; it reverted simply to the seigneur by custom of tradition.

In the fifth century, St. Claude was the site of a powerful abbey. It did not become an episcopal see, however, until 1742, when its first bishop was Joseph de Madet.

At the Revolution the see was suppressed, but it rose again, phoenix-like, in 1821, and endures to-day as a suffragan of Lyon et Vienne.

The cathedral of St. Pierre is a fourteenth-century edifice, with later work (seventeenth century) equally to be remarked. As a work of restoration it appears poorly done, but the entire structure is of more than ordinary interest; nevertheless it still remains an uncompleted work.

The church is of exceedingly moderate dimensions, and is in no sense a great achievement. Its length cannot be much over two hundred feet, and its width and height are approximately equal (85 feet), producing a symmetry which is too conventional to be really lovable.

Still, considering its environment and the a.s.sociation as the old abbey church, to which St. Claude, the bishop of Besancon, retired in the twelfth century, it has far more to offer in the way of a pleasing prospect than many cathedrals of greater architectural worth.

There are, in its interior, a series of fine choir-stalls in wood, of the fifteenth century--comparable only with those at Rodez and Albi for their excellence and the luxuriance of their carving--a sculptured _Renaissance retable_ depicting the life of St. Pierre, and a modern high-altar. This last accessory is not as worthy an art work as the two others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Notre Dame de Bourg_]

XXIII

NOTRE DAME DE BOURG

The chief ecclesiastical attraction of Bourg-en-Bresse is not its one-time cathedral of Notre Dame, which is but a poor Renaissance affair of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.

The famous eglise de Brou, which Matthew Arnold described so justly and fully in his verses, is a florid Gothic monument which ranks among the most celebrated in France. It is situated something less than a mile from the town, and is a show-piece which will not be neglected. Its charms are too many and varied to be even suggested here.

There are a series of sculptured figures of the prophets and apostles, from a fifteenth or sixteenth-century _atelier_, that may or may not have given the latter-day Sargent his suggestion for his celebrated "frieze of the prophets." They are wonderfully like, at all events, and the observation is advisedly included here, though it is not intended as a sneer at Sargent's masterwork.

This wonderful sixteenth-century eglise de Brou, in a highly decorated Gothic style, its monuments, altars, and admirable gla.s.s, is not elsewhere equalled, as to elaborateness, in any church of its size or rank.

Notre Dame de Bourg--the cathedral--though manifestly a Renaissance structure, has not a little of the Gothic spirit in its interior arrangements and details. It is as if a Renaissance sh.e.l.l--and not a handsome one--were enclosing a Gothic treasure.

There is the unusual polygonal apside, which dates from the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and is the most curious part of the entire edifice.

The octagonal tower of the west has, in its higher story, been replaced by an ugly dome-shaped excrescence surmounted by an enormous gilded cross which is by no means beautiful.

The west facade in general, in whose portal are shown some evidences of the Gothic spirit, which at the time of its erection had not wholly died, is uninteresting and all out of proportion to a church of its rank.

The interior effect somewhat redeems the unpromising exterior.

There is a magnificent marble high-altar, jewel-wrought and of much splendour. The two chapels have modern gla.s.s. A fine head of Christ, carved in ivory, is to be seen in the sacristy. Previous to 1789 it was kept in the great council-chamber of the _etats de la Bresse_.

In the sacristy also there are two pictures, of the German school of the sixteenth century.

There are sixty-eight stalls, of the sixteenth century, carved in wood.

Curiously enough, these stalls--of most excellent workmans.h.i.+p--are not placed within the regulation confines of the choir, but are ranged in two rows along the wall of the apside.

XXIV

GLANDeVE, SENEZ, RIEZ, SISTERON

The diocese of Digne now includes four _ci-devant_ bishoprics, each of which was suppressed at the Revolution.

The ruins of the ancient bishopric of Glandeve are to-day replaced by the small town of D'Entrevaux, whose former cathedral of St. Just has now disappeared. The see of Glandeve had in all fifty-three bishops, the first--St. Fraterne--in the year 459.

Senez was composed of but thirty-two parishes. It was, however, a very ancient foundation, dating from 445 A. D. Its cathedral was known as Notre Dame, and its chapter was composed of five canons and three dignitaries. At various times forty-three bishops occupied the episcopal throne at Senez.