The Cathedrals Of Southern France Part 36

Under the reign of St. Louis many of the grand cathedrals and the larger monastic churches were grandly favoured with this accessory, notably at Amiens and Beauvais, at Burgos in Spain, and at Canterbury.

Here the elaborate screen was designed to protect the ranges of stalls and their canopied _dossiers_, and give a certain seclusion to the chapter and officiants.

Elsewhere--out of regard for the people it is to be presumed--this feature was in many known instances done away with, and the material of which it was constructed--often of great richness--made use of in chapels subsequently erected in the walls of the apside or in the side aisles of the nave. This is to be remarked at Rodez particularly, where the reerected _cloture_ is still the show-piece of the cathedral.

The organ _buffet_ is, as usual (in the minds of the local resident), a remarkably fine piece of cabinet-work and nothing more. One always qualifies this by venturing the opinion that no one ever really does admire these overpowering and ungainly accessories.

What triforium there is is squat and ugly, with ungraceful openings, and the high-altar is a modern work in the pseudo-cla.s.sic style, quite unworthy as a work of art.

The five apsidal chapels are brilliant with coloured gla.s.s, but otherwise are not remarkable.

In spite of all incongruity, Ste. Marie d'Auch is one of those fascinating churches in and about which one loves to linger. It is hard to explain the reason for this, except that its environment provides the atmosphere which is the one necessary ingredient to a full realization of the appealing qualities of a stately church.

The archiepiscopal palace adjoins the cathedral in the rear, and has a n.o.ble _donjon_ of the fourteenth century. Its career of the past must have been quite uneventful, as history records no very b.l.o.o.d.y or riotous events which have taken place within or before its walls.

Fenelon was a student at the College of Auch, and his statue adorns the Promenade du Fosse.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. ETIENNE _de TOULOUSE_]

XIII

ST. ETIENNE DE TOULOUSE

The provincialism of Toulouse has been the theme of many a French writer of ability,--offensively provincial, it would seem from a consensus of these written opinions.

"Life and movement in abundance, but what a life!" ... "The native is saved from coa.r.s.eness by his birth, but after a quarter of an hour the substratum shows itself." ... "The working girl is graceful and has the vivacity of a bird, but there is nothing in her cackle." ... "How much more beautiful are the stars that mirror themselves in the gutter of the Rue du Bac." ... "There is a yelp in the accents of the people of the town."

Contrariwise we may learn also that "the water is fine," "the quays are fine," and "fine large buildings glow in the setting sun in bright and softened hues," and "in the far distance lies the chain of the Pyrenees, like a white bed of watery clouds," and "the river, dressed always in smiling verdure, gracefully skirts the city."

These pessimistic and optimistic views of others found the contributors to this book in somewhat of a quandary as to the manner of mood and spirit in which they should approach this provincial capital.

They had heard marvels of its Romanesque church of St. Saturnin, perhaps the most perfect and elaborate of any of its kind in all France; of the curious amalgamated edifice, now the cathedral of St. Etienne, wherein two distinct church bodies are joined by an unseemly ligature; of the church of the Jacobins; and of the "seventy-seven religious establishments" enumerated by Taine.

All these, or less, were enough to induce one to cast suspicion aside and descend upon the city with an open mind.

Two things one must admit: Toulouse does somewhat approach the gaiety of a capital, and it _is_ provincial.

Its list of attractions for the visitor is great, and its churches numerous and splendid, so why carp at the "ape-like manners" of the corner loafers, who, when all is said, are vastly less in number here than in many a northern centre of population.

The Musee is charming, both as to the disposition of its parts and its contents. It was once a convent, and has a square courtyard or promenade surrounded by an arcade. The courtyard is set about with green shrubs, and a lofty brick tower, pierced with little arched windows and mullioned with tiny columns, rises skyward in true conventual fas.h.i.+on.

Altogether the Musee, in the attractiveness of its fabric and the size and importance of its collections, must rank, for interest to the tourist, at the very head of those outside Paris itself.

As for the churches, there are many, the three greatest of which are the cathedral of St. Etienne, St. Saturnin, and the eglise des Jacobins; in all is to be observed the universal application or adoption of _des materiaux du pays_--bricks.

In the cathedral tower, and in that of the eglise des Jacobins, a Gothic scheme is worked out in these warm-toned bricks, and forms, in contrast with the usual execution of a Gothic design, a most extraordinary effect; not wholly to the detriment of the style, but certainly not in keeping with the original conception and development of "pointed"

architecture.

In 1863 Viollet-le-Duc thoroughly and creditably restored St. Saturnin at great expense, and by this treatment it remains to-day as the most perfectly preserved work extant of its cla.s.s.

It is vast, curious, and in a rather mixed style, though thoroughly Latin in motive.

It is on the border-line of two styles; of the Italian, with respect to the full semicircular arches and vaulting of the nave and aisles; the square pillars dest.i.tute of all ornament, except another column standing out in flat relief--an intimation of the quiet and placid force of their functions.

With the transition comes a change in the flowered capitals, from the acanthus to tracery and grotesque animals.

There are five domes covering the five aisles, each with a semicircular vault. The walls, with their infrequent windows, are very thick.

The delightful belfry--of five octagonal stages--which rises from the crossing of the transepts, presents, from the outside, a fine and imposing arrangement. So, too, the chapelled choir, with its apse of rounded vaults rising in imposing tiers. This fine church is in direct descent from the Roman manner; built and developed as a simple idea, and, like all antique and cla.s.sical work,--approaching purity,--is a living thing, in spite of the fact that it depicts the sentiment of a dead and gone past.

It might not be so successfully duplicated to-day, but, considering that St. Saturnin dates from the eleventh century, its commencement was sufficiently in the remote past to allow of its having been promulgated under a direct and vigorous Roman influence.

The brick construction of St. Saturnin and of the cathedral is not of that justly admired quality seen in the ancient Convent of the Jacobins, which dates from the thirteenth century. Here is made perhaps the most beautiful use of this style of mediaeval building. It is earlier than the Pont de Montauban, the churches at Moissac or Lombez, and even the cathedral at Albi, but much later than the true Romanesque brickwork, which alternated rows of brick with other materials.

The builders of Gallo-Romain and Merovingian times favoured this earlier method, but work in this style is seldom met with of a later date than the ninth century.

The eglise of St. Saturnin shows, in parts, brickwork of a century earlier than the eglise des Jacobins, but, as before said, it is not so beautiful.

When the Renaissance came to deal with _brique_, it did not do so badly.

Certainly the domestic and civil establishments of Touraine in this style--to particularize only one section--are very beautiful. Why the revival was productive of so much thorough badness when it dealt with stone is one of the things which the expert has not as yet attempted to explain; at least, not convincingly.

The contrasting blend of the northern and southern motive in the hybrid cathedral at Toulouse will not remain unnoticed for long after the first sensation of surprise at its curious ground-plan pa.s.ses off.

Here are seen a flamboyant northern choir and aisles in strange juxtaposition with a thirteenth-century single vaulted nave, after the purely indigenous southern manner.

This nave nearly equals in immensity those in the cathedrals of Albi and Bordeaux. It has the great span of sixty-two feet, necessitating the employment of huge b.u.t.tresses, which would be remarkable anywhere, in order to take the thrust. The un.o.bstructed flooring of this splendid nave lends an added dignity of vastness. Near the vaulted roof are the only apertures in the walls. Windows, as one knows them elsewhere, are practically absent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Nave of St. Etienne de Toulouse_]

The congregations which a.s.semble in this great aisleless nave present a curiously animated effect by reason of the fact that they scatter themselves about in knots or groups rather than crowding against either the altar-rail or pulpit, occasionally even overflowing into the adjoining choir. The nave is entirely un.o.bstructed by decorations, such as screens, pillars, or tombs. It is a mere sh.e.l.l, _sans_ gallery, _sans_ aisles, and _sans_ triforium.

The development of the structure from the individual members of nave and choir is readily traced, and though these parts show not the slightest kind of relations.h.i.+p one to the other, it is from these two fragmentary churches that the completed, if imperfect, whole has been made.

The west front, to-day more than ever, shows how badly the cathedral has been put together; the uncovered bricks creep out here and there, and buildings to the left, which formerly covered the incongruous joint between the nave and choir, are now razed, making the patchwork even more apparent. The square tower which flanks the portal to the north is not unpleasing, and dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The portal is not particularly beautiful, and is bare of decorations of note. It appears to have been remodelled at some past time with a view to conserving the western rose window.

There are no transepts or collateral chapels, which tends to make the ground-plan the more unusual and lacking in symmetry.

The choir (1275-1502) is really very beautiful, taken by itself, far more so than the nave, from which it is extended on a different axis.

It was restored after a seventeenth-century fire, and is supposed to be less beautiful to-day than formerly.

There are seventeen chapels in this choir, with much coloured gla.s.s of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, all with weird polychromatic decorations in decidedly bad taste.

Toulouse became a bishopric in the third century, with St. Saturnin as its first bishop. It was raised to the rank of archiepiscopal dignity in 1327, a distinction which it enjoys to-day in company with Narbonne. Six former suffragan bishoprics, Pamiers, Rieux, Mirepoix, Saint-Papoul, Lombez, and Lavaur were suppressed at the Revolution.