The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine Part 15

In 813 a numerous council met here, at the orders of Charlemagne, under the presidency of Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne and chaplain of the holy palace at Rome.

In the tenth century the church at Mayence did not fall to the sad state that it did elsewhere. Ecclesiastical writers of France have always referred to this period as _le siecle de plomb_, but at Mayence it still steadily approached the golden age.

Mayence was still distinguished by the zeal of its archbishops, whose good influences were far-reaching.

Under the episcopate of St. Boniface and his immediate successors the cathedral of Mayence was probably a wooden structure, as were many of the earlier churches of the evangelizing period in Germany and Gaul.

The work on the mediaeval cathedral was completed by 1037, under Archbishop Bardon, and its consecration took place in presence of the Emperor Conrad II.

Twelve years after this ceremony, Pope Leo IX. came to Mayence and held a famous council, at which the emperor was present, accompanied by the princ.i.p.al n.o.bles of the empire.

The cathedral fell a prey to the flames in 1087, as well as three other neighbouring churches, say the older chronicles, and the ancient structure disappeared almost entirely, so far as its original outline was concerned.

Archbishop Conrad of Wittelsbach restored the nave inside of three years, and the monument again took on some of its ancient magnificence.

In 1198 Emperor Philip of Suabia, son of Frederick Barbarossa, was solemnly crowned in this cathedral by the Archbishop of Tarentaise, the Archbishop of Mayence being at that time in the Holy Land.

The twelfth-century work doubtless was erected on the foundations of Archbishop Bardon's structure.

The restoration of the transept and the western choir followed, and the work went on more or less intermittently until the middle of the thirteenth century, when the fabric approached somewhat the appearance that it has to-day.

The completed structure was consecrated in 1239, and, save the chapels of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the body of the edifice has not greatly changed since that time.

During the Thirty Years' War it became practically a ruin, however, though its later rebuilding was on the original lines.

In 1793 the revolution which sprang up in France forced its way to the Rhine, and, when Mayence was besieged, the roof of the cathedral caught fire and the church itself was pillaged and profaned.

For a long time the old cathedral remained abandoned, as after an invasion of barbarians, which is about what the revolutionists proved themselves to be. In 1803 Napoleon saw fit to order it to be restored, and in the following year it was returned to its adherents.

The ancient metropolis, however, lost the distinction which had been given to it in Roman times, and the glory first brought upon it by St.

Boniface lapsed when the arch-episcopal see was suppressed. Mayence is now merely a bishopric, a suffragan of Cologne.

In its general plan the cathedral at Mayence follows the outlines of a Latin cross, though its length is scarcely more than double its width.

It is most singular in outline and has two choirs, one at either end, as is a frequent German custom, and the sky-line is curiously broken by the six towers which pierce the air, no two at the same elevation.

There are three portals which give entrance from various directions.

There is yet a fourth entrance from the market-place, which takes one through a sort of cellar which is not in the least churchly and is decidedly unpleasant.

The princ.i.p.al nave is supported by nine squared pillars, which are hardly beautiful in themselves, but which are doubtless necessary because of the great weight they have to bear.

In the Gothic choir is a heavy _baldaquin_ in marble, bearing figures of the twelve apostles. The high altar is directly beneath the cupola, or lantern, of the princ.i.p.al tower. It is quite isolated, and has neither flanking columns nor a _baldaquin_. On feast-days it is brilliantly set forth with candelabra in a fas.h.i.+on which would be theatrical, if it were not churchly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAYENCE CATHEDRAL]

Behind this altar is the s.p.a.ce reserved for the clergy, a somewhat unusual arrangement, but not a unique one. At the extreme end is the bishop's throne.

The general appearance of the interior constructive elements would seem to place the work as a whole well within the thirteenth century, though the extreme easterly portion is more ancient still.

There is very little of pure Gothic to be noted. Mostly the fabric is a reproduction of the Lombard style, though much undeniably Gothic ornament is used. The bays of the nave are singularly narrow and of great height, almost the reverse of the pure Italian manner of building which elsewhere made itself strongly felt along the Rhine. The height of these bays is more than two and a half times the width. The bays of German churches, in general, have a much greater length than those of Italy, and herein is a marked difference between the Italian and German styles in spite of other resemblances.

There are in the cathedral numerous paintings of questionable artistic worth and an abundance of coloured gla.s.s, which is condemned as comparatively modern and of no especial interest.

The altar of St. Martin, with statues of Sts. Martin and Boniface, is near the baptistery. There are eight lateral chapels, out of fifteen in all, which are bare and without altars, showing a poverty--whatever may have been the cause--which is deplorable.

In the Ba.s.senheim chapel is a remarkable marble group taken from the church of Notre Dame, a Gothic edifice destroyed during the siege of 1793.

There are numerous and beautiful funeral monuments scattered about the church, the most celebrated being that which surmounts the tomb of Frastrada, the third wife of Charlemagne, who died in 794, and was originally interred in the church of St. Alban. The remains were removed to the cathedral when the former church was burned in 1552.

On the tomb of Frastrada one may read the following eighth-century inscription:

"_Frastradana, pia Caroli conjux vocitata, Christo dilecta, jacet hoc sub marmore tecta, Anno septingentesimo nonagesimo quarto, Quem numerum metro claudere musa negat Rex pie, quem gessit Virgo, licet hic cinerescit, Spiritus hres sit patriae quae tristia nescit._"

There are also the tombs of thirty-two archbishops,--a veritable valhalla of churchly fame. Mostly these tombs are ordinary enough, those of Archbishop Berthould of Henneberg and of the doyen of the chapter being alone remarkable.

The chapel of St. Gothard, a dependency of the cathedral, was built by Archbishop Adelbert I. in 1135-36.

The ancient cloister at Mayence dates from the mid-thirteenth century.

Archbishop Siegfried was responsible for the work which was consecrated in the year 1243 in the presence of the Emperor Conrad, on the occasion of a synod which was being held at Mayence at that time. The cloister, as it exists to-day, is made up in part of this ancient work and in part of a more modern construction, this latter being the portion which adjoins the church proper.

The chapter-house was built at the end of the twelfth century or at the beginning of the thirteenth. It is a square apartment covered with an ogival vaulting which springs from a range of pillars with delicately sculptured foliaged capitals. It is decidedly the architectural gem of this composite edifice.

To the north of the cathedral, in the Speise-Markt, is a remarkably fine fountain, restored, or perhaps rebuilt, in the sixteenth century by the Archbishop of Mayence. A _baldaquin_ supported by three pillars rises above a well or spring, and on a stone slab one reads the following inscription in letters of gold:

"_Divo Karolo V Cesare semp Augus. post victoria gallicam rege ipso ad Ticinum superato ac capto triumphante, fatalique rusticoru per Germnia (sic) cospiratione prostrata, Alber. card. et archiep. Mog.

fonte hanc vetustate dilapsa ad civiu suorum posteritatisque usum rest.i.tui curavit anno MDXXVI._"

The Meistersingers of Mayence owed their origin to Henry Misnie, who, according to some authorities, was a canon of the Church, and, according to others, a doctor of theology. He was devoted, at any rate, to poetry, and was, in the fourteenth century, founder of the school of the Master-singers.

He dedicated a great part of his songs to the Virgin, his ideal of all that was pious and good. Later he widened the range of his dedications to include all of the female s.e.x, and beautiful women in particular. He is known in the history of German poetry under the name of Henry von Frauenlob.

His death caused a universal sorrow among the fair s.e.x of Mayence, who gave his funeral such honours as were never before known.

The majority of the great procession which conducted his remains to the tomb, which had been prepared in the cathedral, were women, "eight of the most beautiful bearing a crown of roses, lilies, and myrtle." This is a pretty enough sentiment, but it seems quite inexplicable to-day.

History records that the master-singer's favourite drink was the n.o.ble wine of the Rhingau, and it is commonly supposed to have inspired many of his beautiful songs.

Legend steps in and says that "the naves of the cathedral were inundated by the libations which went on at this funeral ceremony."

A modern white marble monument, put into place in 1842, and replacing one that had previously disappeared, stands as a memorial to the sweet singer of the praises of women.

XVII

BACHARACH, BINGEN, AND RUDESHEIM

Bacharach is famous for its legends and its wine. With the former is a.s.sociated the ruins of St. Werner's Church, a fragment of exquisite flamboyant Gothic, though built of what looks like a red sandstone. The Swedes demolished it in the Thirty Years' War, but the lantern and the eastern lancet window still remain to suggest its former great beauty.