Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France Part 4

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOTRE-DAME-DES-DOMS.--AVIGNON]

Another favourite diplomatic and financial device, which was invented by these famous Popes of Avignon, was the system of the "Commende," which enabled relatives of n.o.bles and all those whom it was desirable to placate, not alone ecclesiastics, but mere laymen and b.l.o.o.d.y barons, to become "Commendatory Abbots" or "Commendatory Priors," and to receive at least one-third of the monastery's revenues, without being in any way responsible for the monastery's welfare. This care was left to a Prior or a Sub-prior, a sort of clerical administrator who, crippled in means and in influence, was sometimes unable, sometimes unwilling, to carry out the duties and beneficences of past ages, and who was always the victim of a great injustice. The depths of uselessness to which this infamous practice reduced monastic establishments may be inferred, when it is remembered that before the XVIII century the famous Abbey of La Baume had had thirteen Commendatory Abbots, and that the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of Louis XIV were Commendatory Priors in their infancy.

The Popes found the Commende useful, not only as a means of income, but as a method--at once secure and lucrative--of gaining to their cause the great feudal lords of France, and making the power of these lords an added buffer, as it were, between Avignon and the grasping might of the French Kings. For although the Popes were under "the special protection"

of the Kings, it was as sheep under the special protection of a shearer, and they found that they must protect themselves against a too "special"

and royal fleecing. For they did not always agree that--

"'Tis as goodly a match as match can be To marry the Church and the fleur-de-lis Should either mate a-straying go, Then each--too late--will own 'twas so.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE TOWER OF PHILIP THE FAIR."--VILLENEUVE-LES-AVIGNON.]

Haunted by the humiliation of their heaven-sent power, caged in "Babylonish captivity," it is conceivable that the Popes were too occupied or, perhaps too distracted, to object to the unsuitable modesty of Notre-Dame-des-Doms. When a Pope swept forth from his Cathedral, new-crowned, to give "urbis et orbi" his first pontifical benediction, his eye glanced, it is true, on the crowds prostrate before him, before the church, awed and breathless; but it fell lingeringly--it was irresistibly drawn--across the swift Rhone to the town of the kings who had defied his power, to the royal city of Villeneuve, and to the strong tower of Philip the Fair, standing proudly in the sunlight. Would it be thought strange if their thoughts wandered, or if the portraits of the "French Popes" which hang about the Cathedral walls at Avignon, show more worldly preoccupation than is becoming to the successors of Saint Peter and Vicars of Christ?

Little indeed in the days of their residency did the Popes add to Notre-Dame-des-Doms. A fragile, slender marvel of Gothic architecture, the tomb of John XXII, was placed in the nave before the altar; and a monument to Benedict XII was raised in the church. But their Holinesses incited others in Avignon to good works so successfully that Rabelais laughingly called it the "Ringing city" of churches, convents, and monasteries. The bells of Saint-Pierre, Saint-Symphorien, Saint-Agricol, Sainte-Claire, and Saint-Didier chimed with those of chapels and religious foundations; the Grey Penitents, Black Penitents, and White Penitents, priests, and nuns walked the streets, and Avignon grew truly papal. Clement V and his successors proceeded to the safeguarding of their temporal welfare in truly n.o.ble fas.h.i.+on; and scarcely fifty years later they had become so well pleased with their new residence that the magnificent Clement VI refused to leave in spite of the supplications of Petrarch and Rienzi and a whole deputation of Romans.

During the reign of this Pontiff, the Papal Court became one of the gayest in Christendom. Clement was frankly, joyously voluptuous; and his life seems one moving pageant in which luxurious banquets, beautiful women, and ecclesiastical pomps succeeded each other. The lovely Countess of Turenne sold his preferments and benefices, the immense treasure of John XXII was his, and he showered such benefits on a grateful family that of the five Cardinals who accompanied his corpse from Avignon, one was his brother, one his cousin, and three his nephews; and that the Huguenots who violated his tomb at La-Chaise-Dieu, should have used his skull as a wine-cup, seems an horrible, but not an unfitting mockery. It was in vain that Petrarch hotly wrote, "the Pope keeps the Church of Jesus Christ in shameful exile." The desire for return to Rome had pa.s.sed.

Avignon was not an original nor a plenary possession of the Holy Fathers, but "the fairest inheritance of the Berengers," and it was from that family that half of the city had to be wrested--or obtained. Now the lords of Provence were Kings of Naples and Sicily, and therefore va.s.sals of the Holy See. For when the Normans took these Southern states from the Greeks and thereby incurred the jealousy of all Italy, they had warily placed themselves under the protection of the Pope and agreed to hold their new possessions as a papal invest.i.ture. It happened at this time that the va.s.sal of the Pope in Naples and in Sicily was the beauteous "Reino Joanno," the heiress of Provence. What she was no writer could describe in better words than these, "with extreme beauty, with youth that does not fade, red hair that holds the sunlight in its tangles, a sweet voice, poetic gifts, regal peremptoriness, a Gallic wit, genuine magnanimity, and rhapsodical piety, with strange indecorum and bluntness of feeling under the extremes of splendour and misery, just such a lovely, perverse, bewildering woman was she, great granddaughter of Raymond-Berenger, fourth Count of Provence,--the pupil of Boccaccio, the friend of Petrarch, the enemy of Saint Catherine of Siena, the most dangerous and most dazzling woman of the XIV century. So typically Provencal was this Queen's nature, that had she lived some centuries later, she might have been Mirabeau's sister. The same 'terrible gift of familiarity,' the same talent of finding favour and swaying popular a.s.semblages, the same sensuousness, bold courage, and great generosity were found in this early orphaned, thrice widowed heiress of Provence. To this day, the memory of the Reino Joanno lives in her native land, a.s.sociated with numbers of towers and fortresses, the style of whose architecture attests their origin under her reign. It says much for her personal fascinations that far from being either cursed or blamed she is still remembered and praised. The ruins of Gremaud, Tour Drainmont, of Guillaumes, and a castle near Roccaspervera, all bear her name: at Draguignan and Flagose, they tell you her ca.n.a.l has supplied the town with water for generations: in the Esterels, the peasants who got free grants of land, still invoke their benefactress.

At Saint-Vallier, she is blessed because she protected the hamlet near the Siagne from the oppression of the Chapters of Gra.s.se and Lerins. At Aix and Avignon her fame is undying because she dispelled some robber-bands; at Ma.r.s.eilles she is popular because she modified and settled the jurisdiction of Viscounts and Bishops. Go up to Gra.s.se and in the big square where the trees throw a flickering shadow over the street-traders, you will see built in a vaulted pa.s.sage a flight of stone steps, steps which every barefoot child will tell you belong to the palace of 'La Reino Joanno.' Walls have been altered, gates have disappeared, but down those time-worn steps once paced the liege lady of Provence, the incomparable 'fair mischief' whose guilt ... must ever remain one of the enigmas of history." This "enigma" has strange a.n.a.logies to one which has puzzled and impa.s.sioned the writers of many generations, the mystery of that other "fair mischief" of a later century, Mary Queen of Scots. Like Mary, Jeanne was accused of the murder of her young husband, and being pressed by the vengeance of his brother--no less a person than the King of Hungary,--she decided to retreat to her native Provence and appeal to the Pope, her gallant and not over-scrupulous suzerain. "Jeanne landed at Ponchettes," continues the writer who has so happily described her, "and the consuls came to a.s.sure her of their devotion. 'I come,' replied the heiress, whose wit always suggested a happy phrase, 'to ask for your hearts and nothing but your hearts.' As she did not allude to her debts, the populace threw up their caps; the Prince de Monaco, just cured of his wound at Crecy, placed his sword at her service; and the Baron de Benil, red-handed from a cruel murder, besought her patronage which, perhaps from a fellow-feeling, she promised with great alacrity. At Gra.s.se she won all hearts and made many more promises, and finally, arriving at Avignon, she found Clement covetous of the city and well-disposed to her. Yet morality obliged him to ask an explanation of her recent change of husbands, and before three Cardinals, whom he appointed to be her judges, the Queen pleaded her own cause. Not a blush tinged her cheek, no tremor altered her melodious voice as she stood before the red-robed Princes of the Church and narrated, in fluent Latin, the story of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Andrew, the death of her child, and her marriage with the murderer, Louis of Tarento, who stood by her side. The wily Pope noted behind her the proud Provencal n.o.bles, the Villeneuves and d'Agoults, the de Baux and the Lescaris, who brought the fealty of the hill-country, and who did not know that, having already sold her jewels to the Jews, their fair Queen was covenanting with the Pope for Avignon.

The formal trial ended, the Pontiff solemnly declared the Queen to be guiltless,--and she granted him the city for eighty thousand pieces of gold."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GREAT PALACE."--AVIGNON.]

Clement enjoyed owners.h.i.+p in the same agreeable manner as his predecessors, "without the untying of purse-strings." Perhaps he used the purse's contents for the more pressing claim of the great Palace of which he built so large a part; perhaps he handed it, still filled, to Innocent VI who built the famous fortifications of Avignon and protected himself against the marauding "White Companies," perhaps it was still untouched when Bertrand du Guesclin and his Grand Company stood before the gate and demanded "benediction, absolution, and two hundred thousand pounds." "What!" the Pope is said to have cried, "must we give absolution, which here in Avignon is paid for, and then give money too--it is contrary to reason!" Du Guesclin replied to the bearer of these words, "Here are many who care little for absolution, and much for money,"--and Urban yielded.

Gregory XI, the last of the "French Popes," returned to Rome, and at his death the "Great Schism" followed;--Clement VII, in Avignon, was recognised by France, Spain, Scotland, Sicily, and Cyprus; Urban VI, in Rome, by Italy, Austria, and England. The County Venaissin was ravaged by wars and the pests that come in their train. At length the Avignonnais, who had not enjoyed greater peace under their anointed rulers than under worldling Counts, rose against Pierre de Luna, the "Anti-pope" Benedict XIII, who fled. From that time no Pontiff entered the gates, and the city was administered by papal legates. In later days, in spite of the sacred character of its rulers and his own undoubted orthodoxy, Louis XIV seized Avignon several times; and Louis XV, in unfilial vengeance for the excommunication of the Duke of Parma, took possession of the city. But it was not until after the beginning of the French Revolution, in 1791, that the Avignonnais themselves arose, chased the Vice-Legate of the Pope from the city, and appealed for union with France; and it was at this period that the Chapel of Sainte-Marthe, the Cloister, and the Chapter House were swept away. Thus ended the temporal power of the Papacy in France, planned for worldly profit and carried out with many sordid compromises;--a residency unnoted for great deeds or n.o.ble intentions and whose close marked the "Great Schism."

To-day papal Avignon is become French Avignon, a pleasant city where the Provencal sun is hot and where the Mistral whistles merrily. Above the banks of the Rhone the simple Cathedral stands, with its priests still garbed in papal red, its Host still carried under the white papal panoply. Here also is the great Palace of the Popes, "which is indeed,"

says Froissart, "the strongest and most magnificent house in the world."

And yet its grim walls suggest neither peace nor rest; and to him who recalls, this great, impressive pile tells neither of glories nor of triumphs. Bands of unbelieving Pastoureaux marched toward it; soldiers of the "White Companies" and soldiers of du Guesclin gazed mockingly at it; it was the prison of Rienzi, and the home of the hara.s.sed Popes who had ever before them, just across the river, the menacing tower of that "fair king" who had led them into "Babylonish captivity."

[Sidenote: Vaison.]

On the banks of a pleasant little river among the Provencal hills is Vaison, one of the ancient Gallic towns which became entirely romanised; and many ill.u.s.trious families of the Empire had summer villas there as at Arles and Orange. Barbarians of one epoch or another have devastated Vaison of all her antique treasures, except the remains of an Amphitheatre on the Puymin Hill. Germanic tribes who swooped down in early centuries destroyed her villas and her greater buildings; and vandals of a later day have scattered her sculptures and her tablets here and there. Some are in the galleries of Avignon; a Belus, the only one found in France, was sent to the Museum of Saint-Germain; and in the mult.i.tude of treasures in the British Museum, the most beautiful of all her statues, a Diadumenus, is artistically lost. In the days when it still adorned the city, during the reign of the Emperor Gallienus, Vaison was christianised by Saint Ruf, her Bishopric was founded, and in 337 the first General Council of the Church held in Gaul a.s.sembled here.

Another Council in the V century, and still another in the VI, are proof of her continued importance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "ON THE BANKS OF A PLEASANT LITTLE RIVER IS VAISON."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE RUINED CASTLE OF THE COUNTS OF TOULOUSE."--VAISON.]

Among the first of Gallo-Roman cities, she was also among the first to suffer. Chrocus and his horde who sacked Orange, seized her Bishop and murdered him; and Alains, Vandals, and Burgundians, following in their wake, brought disaster after disaster to the cities lying near the Rhone. Vaison, by miracle, did not lose her prestige. In the X and XI centuries she built her fine Cathedral with its Cloisters, and in 1179 she was still great enough to excite the covetousness of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. This magnificent and ambitious prince built a castle on a height above the city, and as he had before terrorised my Lord Bishop of Carpentras, so now he seized the anointed person of Berenger de Reilhane, who was not only Vaison's Bishop, but her temporal prince as well. Berenger was a sufficiently powerful personage to make an outcry which re-echoed throughout Christendom; the Pope and the Emperor came to his aid; and in the Abbey Church of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, Raymond VI did solemn penance, and, before receiving absolution, was publicly struck by the Papal Legate with a bundle of birch rods. Above the Bishop's Palace the great castle still loomed in menace, but on that day Berenger de Reilhane triumphed and Vaison was at peace.

It was a peace which presaged her quiet, uneventful downfall. For other interests were growing stronger in the country, other cities grew where she stood still, and in the XIV century, when Avignon became the seat of papal power, Vaison had pa.s.sed from the world's history. Her Bishopric endured till 1801, but her doings are worthy only of provincial chronicles and to-day she is but a little country town, served by the stage-coach. She still lies on both banks of the river; the "high city,"

with long rows of deserted houses, climbs the side of the steep hill and is dominated by the ruins of the great castle, which Richelieu destroyed. The "lower city," which is the busier of the two, lies on the opposite bank; and on its outskirts, in a little garden-close, almost surrounded by the fields, is the Cathedral,--solitary, lonely, and old.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE WHOLE APSE-END."--VAISON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE SOUTH WALL WHICH IS CLEARLY SEEN FROM THE ROAD."--VAISON.]

The decoration of the exterior is slight, a dentiled cornice and a graceful foliated frieze extend along the top of the side-walls, which although most plainly built, are far from being severely angular or gaunt and have a quaint and pleasing harmony of line. The west front is so featureless that it scarcely deserves the t.i.tle of facade. The south wall, which is clearly seen from the road, has a small portal and plain b.u.t.tresses that slope at the top. The central apse is rectangular and heavy, the little southern apse is short and round, and that of the north is tall and thin as a pepper-box. Behind them rise the pointed roof of the nave and the heavy tower. The whole apse-end is constructed in most picturesque irregularity, and the new red of the roof-tiles and sombre grey of the old stone add greatly to its charm.

Unlike many churches of its period Notre-Dame of Vaison is three-aisled.

Slender, narrow naves, whose tunnel vaults are not extremely lofty, end in small circular apses. The nave is a short one of three irregular bays, and over the last, which precedes the choir, is the little eight-sided dome, which instead of projecting above the roof is curiously placed a little lower than the tunnel vaulting of the other bays. The High Altar, which originally belonged to an older church, is well placed in the simple choir; for it belongs in style, if not in actual fact, to the first centuries of the Faith; and in the semi-darkness behind the altar, the old episcopal throne still stands against the apse's wall, in memory of the custom of the Church's early days. The low arches of the aisles, the dim lighting of the church, its simple ornaments of cla.s.sic bands and little capitals, its slight irregularities of form and carvings, make an interior of fine and strong antique simplicity.

A little door in the north wall leads to the Cloisters, which are happily in a state of complete restoration, and not as a modern writer has described them, "practically a ruin." The wall which overlooks them has an inscription that adjures the Canons to "bear with patience the north aspect of their cells." The short walks have tunnel vaults with cross-vaults in the corners and in parts of the north aisle. Great piers and small, firm columns support the outer arches; and on the exterior of the Cloister the little arches of the columns are enclosed in a large round arch. Many of the capitals are uncarved, some of the piers have applied columns, but many are ornamented in straight cut lines. On one side, two bays open to the ground, forming an entrance-way into the pretty close, where the bushy tops of a few tall trees cast flickering shadows on the surrounding walls and the little gra.s.sy square.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TWO BAYS OPEN TO THE GROUND."--VAISON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GREAT PIERS AND SMALL FIRM COLUMNS."--VAISON.]

The Cloister is small and simple in its rather heavy grace. Noise and unrest seem far from it, and underneath its solid rounded vault is peace and shelter from the world. And in its firm solidity of architecture there is the spirit of a perfect quiet, a tranquil charm which must insensibly have calmed many a restless spirit that chafed beneath the churchly frock, and fled within its walls for refuge and for helpful meditation.

Few Provencal Cathedrals have the interest of Vaison and its Cloister.

Lying in the forgotten valley of the Ouveze, in an old-fas.h.i.+oned town, all its surroundings speak of the past and its atmosphere is quite unspoiled. The church itself has been spared degenerating restorations; and although it has no sumptuousness as at Ma.r.s.eilles, no grandeur as at Arles, no stirring history as the churches that lay near the sea, although it is one of the smallest and most venerable of them all, no Cathedral of the Southland has so great an architectural dignity and merit with so ancient and so quaint a charm.

[Sidenote: Arles.]

In the midst of the wealth of antique ruins, near the Theatre, the Coliseum, and the Forum of this "little Rome of the Gauls," stands a n.o.ble monument of the ruder ages of Christianity, the Cathedral, Saint-Trophime. Here Saint Augustine, apostle to England, was consecrated; here three General Councils of the Church were held, here the Donatists were doomed to everlasting fire, and here the Emperor Constantine, from his summer palace on the Rhone, must have come to "a.s.sist" at Ma.s.s. The building in which these solemn scenes of the early Church were enacted soon disappeared and was replaced by the present one whose older walls Revoil attributes to the IX century. The present Cathedral's first doc.u.mentary date is 1152, in the era of the Republic of Arles. The name of Saint-Etienne was changed, and the body of Saint-Trophime, carried in state from the ruined Church of the Aliscamps, was buried under a new altar and he was solemnly proclaimed the Patron of the richest and most majestic church in all Provence.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "IN THE MIDST OF THE WEALTH OF ANTIQUE RUINS."--ARLES.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FAcADE OF SAINT-TROPHIME.--ARLES.]

Nearly eight hundred years later a traveller stood before the portal of this church. In the midst of his delighted study he suddenly felt the attraction of a pair of watchful eyes, and turned to find a peasant woman gazing fixedly at him. In her strange fascination she had placed beside her, on the ground, two huge melons and a mammoth cabbage, and her wizened hands were folded before her, Sunday-fas.h.i.+on. She was a little witch of a woman, old and bent and brown.

"Yes, my good gentleman," she said, "I have been looking at you,--five whole minutes of the clock, and much good it has done me. In these days of books and such fine learning there is not enough time spent before our door; and I who pa.s.s by it every day, year in, year out, I have watched well, and only two except yourself have ever studied it. The foreigners come with red books and look at them more than at the door itself,--they stay perhaps three minutes, and go off, shaking their wise heads. Our people, pa.s.sing every day, see but a door, a place for going in and coming out." She paused for breath.

"And what do you see?" asked the traveller.

"You ask me?" She smiled wisely. "But you know, since you are standing here and looking too. Listen!" And her old eyes began to gleam. "I'll tell you of a time before you were born. I was a child then; and we marched here every Sunday, other little girls and myself, and we stood before this door. And the nuns--it was often Sister Mary Dolorosa--told us the stories of these stones. See! Here is Our Lord Who loves all mankind, but has to judge us too;--and there is Saint-Trophime. But I cannot read, Monsieur. An old peasant woman has no time for such fine things, and you will laugh at me for telling you what you have in your books,--but I have them all here, here in my heart, and many a time I too come to refresh my old memory, and to pray. Those pictures tell great lessons to those that have eyes to see them. Well, well-a-day, I must pick up my melons and begone, for I have taken up your time and said too much. But you will excuse it in an old woman who is good for little else than talking now."

They parted in true French fas.h.i.+on, with "expressions of mutual esteem,"

and the traveller turned to the portal which was still fulfilling its ancient mission of teaching and of making beautiful the House of G.o.d.

Applied to a severe facade typical of the plainness of Provencal outer walls, this is one of the n.o.blest works of Mediaevalism, the richest and most beautiful portal of the South of France; and no others in the Midi, except those of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard and Moissac, are worthy of comparison with it. In boldness and intellectuality of conception it excels many of the northern works and equals the finest of them. For the builder of the northern portal seems to have held closely to one architectural form, the beautiful convention of the Gothic style; and within that door he placed, in a more or less usual way, the subjects which the Church had sanctioned. In nearly every case the treatment of the subject is subordinated to the general architectural plan and symmetry. At Saint-Trophime there was the limit of s.p.a.ce, the axiom that a door must be a door, and doubtless many allowable subjects. But within these necessary bounds the unknown sculptor recognised few conventionalities. The usual place for the portrayal of the Last Judgment, the tympanum, was too small for his conception of the scene; the pier that divides his door-way was not built to support the statue of the church's patron saint; he had a mult.i.tude of fancies, and instead of curbing them in some beautiful conventionality of form, as one feels great northern builders often did, this artist made a frame within which his ideas found free play, and, forcing conventionality to its will, his genius justified itself. For not only is the portal as a whole, full of dignity and true symmetry, but its details are thoughtfully worked out.

They show, with the old scholastic form of his Faith, the grasp of the unknown master's mind, the intellectuality of his symbolism, and few portals grow in fascination as this one, few have so interesting an originality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIGHT DETAIL, PORTAL.--ARLES.]

In design it is simple, in execution incomparably rich. The princ.i.p.al theme of the Last Judgment has Christ seated on a throne as the central figure, and about him are the symbols of the four Evangelists. This is the treatment of the tympanum. Underneath, Patriarchs, Saints, Just, and Condemned form the beautiful frieze. The Apostles are seated; and to their left is an angel guarding the gates of Paradise against two Bishops and a crowd of laymen who have yet to fully expiate their sins in Purgatory. Behind them, naked, with their feet in the flames, are those condemned to everlasting h.e.l.l; and still beyond is a lower depth where souls are already half-consumed in hideous fires. On the Apostles'

extreme right is the beginning of our human history, the Temptation of Adam and Eve; and marching toward the holy men, on this same side, is the long procession of those Redeemed from Adam's fall, clothed in righteousness. An angel goes before them, and hands a small child--a ransomed soul--to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The end panels treat the last phases of the dominant theme;--a mammoth angel in the one weighs the souls of the dead; and an equally awe-inspiring devil in the other is preparing to cast two of the Lost into a sea of fire.

The remainder of the portal tells of many subjects, and represents much of the theological symbolism of its time. Light, graceful columns, with delicately foliated capitals and bases rich with meaning sculptures, divide the lower s.p.a.ces into niches, and in these niches stand statues of Apostles and of Saints, each having his story, each his peculiar attributes; and about these chief figures are carved rich designs, strange animals, and numberless short stories of the Bible. Above there is a small, subsidiary frieze; below, the pedestals which tell the tale of those who stand upon them. The figures have life and meaning, if not a true plasticity; and in this portal there is instruction, variety, and majesty, wealth of allegory and subtle symbols for those who love religious mysteries, and splendour of sculpture for those who come in search of Art.

There are those to whom a simple beauty does not appeal. After the richness of the portal's carving, the interior of Saint-Trophime is to them "far too plain;" in futile comparison with the Cloister's grace, it is found "too severe;" and one author has written that only "when the refulgence of a Mediterranean sun glances through a series of long lances, ... then and then only does the Cathedral of Saint-Trophime offer any inducement to linger within its non-impressive walls."

It may not be denied that, together with nearly all the Cathedrals of Provence, this interior has suffered from the addition of inharmonious styles. The most serious of these is its Gothic choir of the XV century, which a certain Cardinal Louis Allemand applied to the narrower Romanesque naves. With irregular ambulatory, chapels of various sizes, and a general incongruity of plan, this construction has no architectural importance except that of a prominent place in the church's wors.h.i.+p. The remaining excrescences, Gothic chapels, Ionic pilasters, elliptical tribune, and the like, are happily hidden along the side aisles or in the transepts; and during the restoration of Revoil the naves were relieved of the disfiguring "improvements" of the XVII century, and stand to-day in much of their fine old simplicity.