The Cathedrals of Northern France Part 16

The somewhat considerable remains of a Roman acqueduct, near by, are sufficiently remarkable to warrant pa.s.sing consideration, even by the "mere lover of churches."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

IX

ST. PIERRE D'AVRANCHES

There is little to recount concerning the See of Avranches. Its bishopric and its cathedral were alike destroyed during the parlous times of the bickerings and ravages of Royalists and Republicans of the Revolutionary period. All that remains to-day is a trifling heap of stones which would hardly fill a row-boat,--a fragment of a shaft on which is a tablet reading:

"ON THIS STONE, HERE AT THE DOOR OF THE CATHEDRAL OF AVRANCHES, AFTER THE MURDER OF THOMAS a BECKET, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, HENRY II., KING OF ENGLAND AND DUKE OF NORMANDY, RECEIVED ON HIS KNEES, FROM THE LEGATES OF THE POPE, THE APOSTOLIC ABSOLUTION, ON SUNDAY, 22D MAY 1172."

At its feet is another slab, the aforementioned door-step, on which, before the papal legate, the remorseful monarch did penance before his later expiation at Canterbury.

A little farther on is a small heap consisting of shafts and capitals of columns, a stone sarcophagus and a bra.s.s plate stating that they are the "Derniers restes de la cathedrale d'Avranches; commencee vers 1090 et consacree par l'eveque Turgis en 1121." The nave having fallen in, the rest of the edifice had to be taken down in 1799.

Because of its picturesque environment and situation, Avranches is perhaps a more than ordinarily attractive setting for a shrine, and it is well worthy of the attention of the pa.s.sing traveller, in spite of its ancient cathedral being now but a heap of stones. Apart from this it is of little interest, and hence, to most, it will probably remain, in the words of a French traveller, a mere "silhouette in the distance."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _CATHEDRAL of S. SAMSON DOL_]

X

ST. SAMSON, DOL-DE-BRETAGNE

The one-time Cathedral of St. Samson, at Dol, is, says an unusually expressive Frenchman, "a grand, n.o.ble, and severe church, now widowed of its bishops. Its aspect is desolate and abandoned, as if it were but a ruin _en face sur la grande place_, of itself, but a mere desert of scrub." This is certainly a vivid and forceful description of even a wholly unprepossessing shrine. This St. Samson is not, and due allowance should be made for verbal modelling which, in many cases, is but the mere expression of a mood _pro tempo_. There is, however, somewhat of truth in the description. About the granite walls there is a grimness and gauntness of decay; of changed plans and projects; of devastation; of restoration; and, finally, of what is, apparently, submission to the inevitableness of time.

The enormous northwesterly tower is stopped suddenly, with the daylight creeping through its very framework. Its facade is certainly bare of ornament, and gives a thorough ill.u.s.tration of paucity of design as well as of detail. There is, indeed, nothing in the west facade to compel admiration, and yet there is a fascination about it that to some will be irresistible.

A sixteenth-century porch, of suggested Burgundian style, forms the main entrance to the church, and is situated midway along the south side.

Almost directly opposite, on the north, is the curiously contrasting feature of a crenelated battlement, a reminder of the time when the church was doubtless a temporal as well as a spiritual stronghold.

The interior, as the exterior, is gloomy and melancholy. One has only to contemplate the collection of ludicrously slender cl.u.s.tered columns of the nave, bound together with markedly visible iron strands, to realize the real weakness of the means by which the fabric has been kept alive.

The nave itself is of true proportions, and, regardless of the severity of its lines, and the ludicrous pillars, is undeniably fine in effect.

A curiously squared choir-end, but with the small apsed lady-chapel extending beyond, is another of those curious details which stand out in a way to be remarked in a French church. In this squared end, and above the arch made by the pillars of the choir aisle, is a large pointed window filled with ancient gla.s.s which must have been inserted soon after the church was reconstructed after the fire in the twelfth century.

The general effect of the nave and aisles is one of extreme narrowness, which perhaps is not so much really the case when actual measurements are taken.

In general, the church is supposed by many to resemble the distinct type of Gothic as it is known across the Channel; and, admitting for the nonce that possibly many of the Brittany structures were the work of English builders, this church, in the absence of any records as to who were its architects, may well be counted as of that number.

The stalls of the choir are of delicately carved wood, before which is placed a monumental bishop's throne, with elaborate armorial embellishments. A Renaissance tomb of the sixteenth century, by a pupil of Michel Colomb, now much injured in its sculptured details of angels and allegorical figures, is locally considered the "show-piece" of the church.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _S. MALO & S. SERVAN_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _TReGUIER_]

XI

ST. MALO AND ST. SERVAN

Welshmen throughout the world rejoice that it was one of their countrymen, a monk of the sixth century, who gave his name as founder to the "walled city of St. Malo by the sea." With its outlying and contiguous towns of St. Servan, Dinan, and Parame, St. Malo is a paradise for the mere lover of pleasure resorts. Further, with respect to the first three places mentioned, there is present not a little of the romance and history of the past, reflected as it were in a modern mirror. Not but that the old town of St. Malo, within the walls, is ancient and picturesque enough, and dirty, too, if one be speciously critical; but the fact is that the modern Pont Roulant, and the omnific toot of the steam-tram, ever present in one's sight and hearing, are forcible reminders of the march of time.

St. Servan, so far as its cathedral is concerned, may be dismissed in a word. The ancient see of St. Pierre d'Aleth had, at one time, its dignity vested in a bishop who enthroned himself in a cathedral, the remains of which exist to-day only as a fragment built into the fortifications. The bishopric was removed in 1142 to St. Malo.

With St. Malo a difference exists. Its cathedral, now degenerated to a parish church, is a Gothic work mainly of the fifteenth century, and, regardless of its unimposing qualities, is one of those fascinating old buildings which, in its environment and surroundings, appeals perhaps more largely to us as a component of a whole than as a feature to be admired by itself. The church, safely sheltered from the ravage of gale and storm, sits amid narrow winding streets, whose buildings are so compressed as to rise to heights unusual in the smaller Continental towns.

The edifice is mainly of the fifteenth century, but has been variously renovated and restored. Gothic, Renaissance, and the transition between the two are plainly discernible throughout. Perhaps the best art to be noted is that found in the interior of the choir, with its fine triforium and clerestory windows above. Here, again, is to be observed the squared east end of the English contemporary church, a further reminder, if it be needed, of the influences which were bound to be more or less exchanged with regard to the arts and customs of the time, on both sh.o.r.es of _La Manche_.

A few features of pa.s.sing interest are here, an ivory crucifix, a few tombs, and some indifferent paintings.

The spire is modern, but gives a suggestion, at least, in viewing the city from a distance, of something of what a mediaeval walled seaport, with its population huddled close beneath the shadow of the church, and within the city walls, must have been like. The best example of this which ever existed in mediaeval France, and which exists to-day in a more than ordinary remarkable state of preservation, is the famous Mount St.

Michel, a few miles only to the eastward, and famed of all, historian, ecclesiast, artist, and mere pleasure-seeker, alike. Most writers are pleased to refer to the confiding att.i.tude of mine host, who conducts the princ.i.p.al hostelry on the Mount, and who guilelessly asks the wary traveller (ofttimes they _are_ wary) what he has partaken of during his stay, and makes up the account accordingly. This is, perhaps, not the least of attributive charms, though it should be a minor one where this wonderful and real Mount, which takes its name from legendary St.

Michel, is concerned. Indeed, leaving the cathedrals at Rouen, Chartres, and Le Mans out of the question, it is doubtful if the Abbey of Mont St.

Michel is not the chief remaining architectural glory of the middle ages, west of Paris.

It is but a short distance from St. Malo to St. Servan, but what a difference! It is called by the French themselves the daughter of St.

Malo,--the "faubourg grown into a city."

Rabida's "Bretagne" states that there are "nombreux des Anglais a St.

Servan, des jeunes gens vivant dans les pensions brittaniques--des familles venant l'ete faire en Bretagne une cure d'economies pour l'hiver." Continuing, this discerning author says: "Bathers, bicyclists, golfists, promenaders, and excursionists abound." Better then let them hold forth here to their hearts' content; there is little that the lover of churches will gain from what remains to-day of the town's former Cathedral of St. Pierre.

XII

TReGUIER

This old cathedral city, at the junction of two small streamlets, a short distance from the sea, lies perhaps a dozen miles away from the nearest railway. With St. Pol de Leon and St. Brieuc it is, in local characteristics and customs alike, a something apart from any other community in northern France. The Bretons are commonly accredited as being a most devout race, and certainly devotion could take no more marked turn than the many evidences here to be seen in this "land of Calvaries." St. Brieuc is a bishopric, suffragan of Rennes, whose cathedral is a hideous modern structure of the early nineteenth century quite unworthy as a shrine; but Treguier's power waned with the Revolution. Its fourteenth-century church, however, is sufficiently remarkable by reason of its situation and surroundings, none the less than in its fabric, to warrant a deviation from well-worn roads in order to visit it. Chiefly of a late period, it possesses in the Tour de Hasting, named after the Danish pirate (though why seems obscure), which enfolds the north transept, a work of the best eleventh-century cla.s.s.

This should place the church, at once, within the scope of the designation of a "transition" type. In this tower the windows and pilasters are of the characteristic round variety of the period. The south porch is the most highly developed feature as to Mediaeval style, but the attraction lies mainly in its ensembled ma.s.siveness, with its two st.u.r.dy towers and a ridiculously spired south _clocher_. Beyond a certain grimness of fabric the church fails, not a little, to impress one with even simple grandeur, even when one takes into consideration the charms of its florid but firmly designed cloister, which, with the church itself, is cla.s.sed by the _Departement des Beaux Arts_ as one of the twenty-three hundred "_Monumentes Historiques_." Nevertheless, the building proves more than ordinarily gratifying, though by no stretch of the imagination could it be cla.s.sed as grand.

Loftiness and grandeur are equally lacking in the interior, and there is great variation of style with respect to the pillars of nave and choir.