The Cathedrals Of Southern France Part 15

"It is the plain of Cavaillon which is the market-garden of Avignon; from whence come the panniers of vegetables and fruits, the _buissons d'artichauts_, and the melons of 'high reputation.'"

Such is the rather free paraphrase of a most charmingly expressed observation on this Provencal land of plenty, written by an eighteenth-century Frenchman.

If it was true in those days, it is no less true to-day, and, though this book is more concerned with churches than with _potagerie_, the observation is made that this fact may have had not a little to do with the early foundation of the church, here in a plenteous region, where it was more likely to prosper than in an impoverished land.

The bishopric was founded in the fifth century by St. Genialis, and it endured constantly until the suppression in 1790.

All interest in Cavaillon, in spite of its other not inconsiderable claims, will be centred around its ancient cathedral of St. Veran, immediately one comes into contact therewith.

The present structure is built upon a very ancient foundation; some have said that the primitive church was of the seventh century. This present cathedral was consecrated by Pope Innocent IV. in person, in 1259, and for that reason possesses a considerable interest which it would otherwise lack.

Externally the most remarkable feature is the arrangement and decoration of the apside--there is hardly enough of it to come within the cla.s.sification of the chevet. Here the quintuple flanks, or sustaining walls, are framed each with a pair of columns, of graceful enough proportions in themselves, but possessed of inordinately heavy capitals.

An octagonal cupola, an unusual, and in this case a not very beautiful feature, crowns the centre of the nave. In reality it serves the purpose of a lantern, and allows a dubious light to trickle through into the interior, which is singularly gloomy.

To the right of the nave is a curiously attenuated _clocher_, which bears a clock-face of minute proportions, and holds a clanging _bourdon_, which, judging from its voice, must be as proportionately large as the clock-face is small.

Beneath this tower is a doorway leading from the nave to the cloister, a beautiful work dating from a much earlier period than the church itself.

This cloister is not unlike that of St. Trophime at Arles, and, while plain and simple in its general plan of rounded arches and vaulting, is beautifully worked in stone, and admirably preserved. In spite of its severity, there is no suggestion of crudity, and there is an elegance and richness in its sculptured columns and capitals which is unusual in ecclesiastical work of the time.

The interior of this church is quite as interesting as the exterior.

There is an ample, though aisleless, nave, which, though singularly dark and gloomy, suggests a vastness which is perhaps really not justified by the actual state of affairs.

A very curious arrangement is that the supporting wall-pillars--in this case a sort of b.u.t.tress, like those of the apside--serve to frame or enclose a series of deep-vaulted side chapels. The effect of this is that all of the flow of light, which might enter by the lower range of windows, is practically cut off from the nave. What refulgence there is--and it is not by any means of the dazzling variety--comes in through the before-mentioned octagon and the upper windows of the nave.

In a chapel--the gift of Philippe de Caba.s.sole, a friend of Petrarch's--is a funeral monument which will even more forcibly recall the name and a.s.sociation of the poet. It is a seventeenth-century tomb of Bishop Jean de Sade, a descendant of the famous Laura, whose ashes formerly lay in the eglise des Cordeliers at Avignon, but which were, it is to be feared, scattered to the winds by the Revolutionary fury.

At the summit of Mont St. Jacques, which rises high above the town, is the ancient _Ermitage de St. Veran_; a place of local pilgrimage, but not otherwise greatly celebrated.

X

NOTRE DAME DES DOMS D'AVIGNON

It would be difficult to say with precision whether Avignon were more closely connected in the average mind with the former papal splendour, with Petrarch and his Laura, or with the famous Felibrage.

Avignon literally reeks with sentimental a.s.sociations of a most healthy kind. No probable line of thought suggested by Avignon's historied and romantic past will intimate even the mawkish, the sordid, or the ba.n.a.l.

It is, in almost limitless suggestion, the city of France above all others in which to linger and drink in the life of its past and present to one's fullest capacities.

For the "literary pilgrim," first and foremost will be Avignon's a.s.sociation with Petrarch, or rather he with it. For this reason it shall be disposed of immediately, though not in one word, or ten; that would be impossible.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Notre Dame des Doms d'Avignon_]

"'The grave of Laura!' said I. 'Indeed, my dear sir, I am obliged to you for having mentioned it,'" were the words with which the local bookseller was addressed by an eighteenth-century traveller. "'Otherwise one might have gone away, to their everlasting sorrow and shame, without having seen this curiosity of your city.'"

The same record of travel describes the guardian of this shrine as "a converted Jew, who, from one year's end to another, has but two duties to perform, which he most punctually attends to. The one to take care of the grave of Laura, and to show it to strangers, the other to give them information respecting all the curiosities. Before his conversion, he stood at the corner by the Hotel de Ville offering lottery tickets to pa.s.sers-by, and asking, till he was hoa.r.s.e, if they had anything to sell. Not a soul took the least notice of him. His beard proved a detriment in all his speculations. Now that he has become a Christian, it is wonderful how everything thrives with him."

At the very end of the Rue des Lices will be found the last remains of the eglise des Cordeliers--reduced at the Revolution to a mere tower and its walls. Here may be seen the spot where was the tomb of Laura de Sade. Arthur Young, writing just before the Revolution, described it as below; though since that time still other changes have taken place, with the result that "Laura's Grave" is little more than a memory to-day, and a vague one at that.

"The grave is nothing but a stone in the pavement, with a figure engraved on it already partly effaced, surrounded by an inscription in Gothic letters, and another on the wall adjoining, with the armorial bearings of the De Sade family."

To-day nothing but the site--the location--of the tomb is still there, the before-mentioned details having entirely disappeared. The vault was apparently broken open at the Revolution, and its ashes scattered. It was here at Avignon, in the eglise de St. Claire, as Petrarch himself has recorded, that he first met Laura de Sade.

The present mood is an appropriate one in which to continue the Petrarchian pilgrimage countryward--to the famous Vaucluse. Here Petrarch came as a boy, in 1313, and, if one chooses, he may have his _dejeuner_ at the _Hotel Petrarque et Laure_; not the same, of course, of which Petrarch wrote in praise of its fish of Sorgues; but you will have them as a course at lunch nevertheless. Here, too, the famed _Fontaine_ first comes to light and air; and above it hangs "Petrarch's Castle," which is not Petrarch's castle, nor ever was. It belonged originally to the bishops of Cavaillon, but it is possible that Petrarch was a guest there at various times, as we know he was at the more magnificent _Palais des Papes_ at Avignon.

This chateau of the bishops hangs perilously on a brow which rises high above the torrential _Fontaine_, and, if sentiment will not allow of its being otherwise ignored, it is permissible to visit it, if one is so inclined. No special hards.h.i.+p is involved, and no great adventure is likely to result from this journey countryward. Tourists have been known to do the thing before "just to get a few snapshots of the fountain."

As to why the palace of the popes came into being at Avignon is a question which suggests the possibilities of the making of a big book.

The popes came to Avignon at the time of the Italian part.i.tion, on the strength of having acquired a grant of the city from Joanna of Naples, for which they were supposed to give eighty thousand golden crowns.

They never paid the bill, however; from which fact it would appear that financial juggling was born at a much earlier period than has. .h.i.therto been supposed.

Seven popes reigned here, from 1305 to 1370; when, on the termination of the Schism, it became the residence of a papal legate. Subsequently Louis XIV. seized the city, in revenge for an alleged affront to his amba.s.sador, and Louis XV. also held it for ten years.

The curious fact is here recalled that, by the treaty of Tolentino (12th February, 1797), the papal power at Rome conceded formally for the first time--to Napoleon I.--their ancient territory of Avignon. On the terms of this treaty alone was Pope Pius allowed to remain nominal master of even shreds of the patrimony of St. Peter.

The significant events of Avignon's history are too great in purport and number to be even catalogued here, but the magnificent papal residence, from its very magnitude and luxuriance, compels attention as one of the great architectural glories, not only of France, but of all Europe as well.

Here sat, for the major portion of the fourteenth century, the papal court of Avignon; which the uncharitable have called a synonym for profligacy, veniality, and luxurious degeneracy. Here, of course, were held the conclaves by which the popes of that century were elected; significantly they were all Frenchmen, which would seem to point to the fact of corruption of some sort, if nothing more.

Rienzi, the last of the tribunes, was a prisoner within the walls of this great papal stronghold, and Simone Memmi of Sienna was brought therefrom to decorate the walls of the popes' private chapel; Petrarch was _persona grata_ here, and many other notables were frequenters of its hospitality.

The palace walls rise to a height of nearly ninety feet, and its battlemented towers add another fifty; from which one may infer that its stability was great; an effect which is still further sustained when the great thickness of its sustaining walls is remarked, and the infrequent piercings of windows and doorways.

This vast edifice was commenced by Pope Clement V. in the early years of the thirteenth century, but nothing more than the foundations of his work were left, when Benedict XII., thirty years later, gave the work into the hands of Peter Obreri--who must have been the Viollet-le-Duc of his time.

Revolution's destroying power played its part here, as generally throughout France, in defacing shrines, monuments, and edifices, civil and ecclesiastical, with little regard for sentiment and absolutely none for reason.

The mob attacked the papal palace with results more disastrous than the acc.u.mulated debas.e.m.e.nt of preceding centuries. The later regime, which turned the magnificent halls of this fortress-like palace into a mere barracks--as it is to-day--was quite as iconoclastic in its temperament.

One may realize here, to the full, just how far a great and n.o.ble achievement of the art and devotion of a past age may sink. The ancient papal palace at Avignon--the former seat of the power of the Roman Catholic religion--has become a mere barracks! To contemplate it is more sad even than to see a great church turned into a stable or an abattoir--as can yet be seen in France.

In its plan this magnificent building preserves its outlines, but its splendour of embellishment has very nearly been eradicated, as may be observed if one will crave entrance of the military inc.u.mbent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VILLENEUVE-. _les-AVIGNON_]

In 1376 Pope Gregory XI. left Avignon for Rome,--after him came the two anti-popes,--and thus ended what Petrarch has called "_L'Empia Babilonia_."

The cathedral of Notre Dame des Doms pales perceptibly before the splendid dimensions of the papal palace, which formerly encompa.s.sed a church of its own of much more artistic worth.

In one respect only does the cathedral lend a desirable note to the _ensemble_. This, by reason of its commanding situation--at the apex of the Rocher des Doms--and by the gilded statue of the Virgin which surmounts the tower, and supplies just the right quality of colour and life to a structure which would be otherwise far from brilliant.

From the opposite bank of the Rhone--from Villeneuve-les-Avignon--the view of the parent city, the papal residence, the cathedral, and that unusual southern attribute, the _beffroi_, all combine in a most glorious picture of a superb beauty; quite rivalling--though in a far different manner--that "plague spot of immorality,"--Monte Carlo, which is mostly thought to hold the palm for the sheer beauty of natural situation.