How France Built Her Cathedrals Part 13

Again, during the Commune, in 1871, for the purpose of destroying it, chairs were piled high in the choir and set on fire, but brave men broke in the doors and extinguished the flames. Early in the World War, in 1914, a German airs.h.i.+p dropped a bomb on Notre Dame which pierced the roof of the transept's northern arm.

THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE[85]

Li cuers doit estre semblans a l'encensier, Tous clos envers la terre et overs vers le ciel.

--(Old song of the Middle Ages).

On the same isle in the Seine with Notre Dame stands the Sainte-Chapelle, the reliquary of stone and jeweled gla.s.s which the saint-king had made to enshrine the Crown of Thorns redeemed from Constantinople. To-day it is a body without a soul, as the revered crown is kept in the treasury of Notre Dame, and until a memorial service during the World War, Ma.s.s had not been said in the _reliquaire de souvenirs_ for fifteen years.

The chapel, which was connected with the king's palace, was begun in 1246 and dedicated in 1248. "It was," said one who knew St. Louis well, "the king's citadel against the adverses of the world." He would rise at midnight to pa.s.s into the chapel for the singing of matins. "Into this shrine Louis IX put all the memories of his crusading ancestors, all the hues of the Orient. It was his vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem." The walls were rich with gold and color. The present polychromatic decorations of the walls are a deplorable modern experiment. Fifteen splendid windows told the Bible story in a thousand small medallions; ninety-one scenes related Genesis; one hundred and twenty-one gave Exodus. A window on the south side told the True Cross story, and the three central windows were devoted to the lives of the Saviour and John the Baptist. The western rose was added during the Flamboyant Gothic revival following the expulsion of the English invaders.

The making of the vast windows of the Sainte-Chapelle raised Paris to the leaders.h.i.+p of the vitrine industry during the second half of the XIII century. Of that school are windows in the cathedrals of Angers and Clermont, and Soissons' western rose. Though of splendid effect, such windows do not equal those of the preceding hundred years, when Chartres and St. Denis led. The borders round each medallion had now become mere zigzags, since expedition was required for the glazing of enormous s.p.a.ces.

The Sainte-Chapelle, as Gothic science, could be carried no farther without violating its own laws and becoming what an English critic said of the late-Gothic of France, "all muscle and gla.s.s." Everywhere was the ascending line accentuated; over the windows are some of the earliest gables extant. They break the horizontal band of the bal.u.s.trade above, and serve structurally as weights on the longitudinal wall arches.

Perhaps it was because the architect felt he was overemphasizing the ascending line that he interrupted the soar of the columns marking the chapel walls, by placing against each shaft the amply draped statue of an apostle--the twelve pillars of the Church. To-day only the forth and fifth statues on the north side are originals; there are merely ancient fragments in the other images. For some time it was thought that the Sainte-Chapelle was the work of Pierre de Montereau, the king's own architect. A newly discovered record proves that he designed St. Denis'

abbatial, which shows, however, no family likeness with the chapel of the Cite palace. Now, that chapel does display a certain likeness to the facades of Notre Dame's transept, and it has been suggested that Jean de Ch.e.l.les, who designed the transept, was the architect of the Sainte-Chapelle.

ST. JULIEN-LE-PAUVRE[86]

La France est l'homme, Paris est le coeur.

--HENRY IV.

Close to the Seine, under the hill of St. Genevieve, stands a small contemporary of the choir of Notre Dame, St. Julien-le-Pauvre, built by the Cistercians of Longpont, about 1180, and claiming as its patrons three saints of the same name, St. Julian, martyr, St. Julian, bishop of Le Mans, and a humble St. Julian who had founded a hospice for pilgrims by the Seine and used to help the poor across the river. It is said that a leper whom he was piloting over vanished in midstream, whereupon the people said it had been the Lord himself come to test the holy man's charity.

The western bays of St. Julien-le-Pauvre have been demolished and all that remains intact of the Primary Gothic church are the choir, with three apsidal chapels, the side aisles' vaulting, and the columns against the side walls. The same sculptor who worked at Notre Dame made the virile capitals of this little church.

St. Julien to-day is used by the Greek-Melchite rite of Roman Catholics.

It long was the patron church of letters and science, and every year from its altar started the procession of the University of Paris to the fair at St. Denis called Lendit, for the solemn purchase of a twelve months' supply of parchment. The rector of the university led the throng, and so vast was the concourse of students that the head of the procession was in St. Denis' abbatial before the rear ranks had quitted St. Julien-le-Pauvre. For four hundred years Paris University elected its rector in this little church, and tradition says that Dante prayed here when he crossed the Alps in 1304. In his imagination was then surging his mighty poem, and the men of France have pictured him pausing to muse over the images of h.e.l.l at their own cathedral doors. The great exile of Florence was himself the purest product of scholasticism, as impa.s.sioned as were the cathedral builders for theology and philosophy, for symmetry and rhythm and the mysterious beauty of numbers. The _Divina Commedia_ was a poetic _Summa_.

ST. GERMAIN-DES-PReS, ST. MARTIN-DES-CHAMPS, AND ST.

PIERRE-DE-MONTMARTRE[87]

Ces venerables benedictines dont la science n'etait egalee que par leur modestie--F. BRUNETIeRE.

There are in Paris three abbey churches that show steps in the transition to Gothic art: St. Germain of the meadows, St. Martin in the fields, and St. Peter's church on the martyr's hill, names that keep alive early Christian traditions--the first bishop and martyr of Paris, St. Peter whom always "the eldest daughter of the Church" was glad to honor; St. Martin, first beloved of the apostles of Gaul, and Bishop Germain (d. 576) who founded outside the city walls the abbey called later by his name, and who helped to Christianize the new Frankish conquerors. So disinterested was he that, to feed the poor, he sold a horse given him by the king; whether riding or walking, the saint-bishop ever went in prayer.

The present church of St. Germain-des-Pres has a tower that in part predates the year 1000; it was erected by an abbot who ruled from 990 to 1014, and shows the small stones used at that period. The nave and transept, finished before the XI century closed, under a bishop of Paris who was uncle of G.o.dfrey de Bouillon, comprise the only remaining Romanesque work in the capital. Twice in the XII century the choir was reconstructed by the monks, first about 1125, and at the same time the ancient tower's upper story was built; and again, after Suger, in 1144, had demonstrated the superiority of Gothic vaulting. St. Germain's abbot wrote, in 1163, that he had repaired his church in a new fas.h.i.+on. In the ambulatory the round and the pointed arch appeared side by side, and the groin vault was used simultaneously with the diagonals. The capitals were altogether Romanesque, since sculpture changed less swiftly than construction in those transitional years. Perhaps the new choir of St.

Germain was not wholly finished when Pope Alexander III dedicated it in 1163, the year that the foundation stone of Notre Dame was laid. The choir's triforium arches were cut off, later, to lengthen the clearstory windows, and the nave has been revaulted.

In the abbey inclosure a Sainte-Chapelle, a cloister, and a refectory were built by Pierre de Montereau; he and his wife, Agnes, were buried in the chapel. Fragments of his work have been collected in the small garden beneath the Carolingian tower of the abbatial, as well as in the gardens of the Musee Cluny.[88] The Revolution entirely wrecked the monk's quarters.

St. Germain-des-Pres, in popular speech, was _The Abbey_. Here gathered the learned men of Paris for mental stimulus. In its priceless library, destroyed by the Revolution, worked those famous scholars Dom Luc d'Achery (d. 1685), Dom Mabillon (d. 1707), and Dom Rivet (d. 1749), whose tireless patience and scrupulous respect for historical truth made the name Benedictine a synonym for "savant." Three monumental works were begun by the XVII-century reformers who renewed the love of letters in the leading monastic houses of France: the _Acta Sanctorum_; the annals of the Benedictine Order; and that pride of French letters, the _Histoire Litteraire de la France_, which to-day the Inst.i.tute of France is continuing. "_Gros livres inutiles_," Voltaire glibly called the invaluable books which for the modern school of mediaeval archaeology have made flesh-and-blood men of the old prelate-builders of cathedrals.

The parts which have survived of that other notable Benedictine establishment in Paris, St. Martin-des-Champs, are now comprised in the _Arts et Metiers_ establishment. Affiliated with great Cluny, St.

Martin's priory was as like it, said Peter the Venerable, as seal is like signet. To-day in the ancient church is installed an exhibit of machinery. The beautiful hall, once the monks' refectory, and now a technical library, is thought to be the work of Pierre de Montereau. The slender pillars dividing it into two aisles, the well-carved capitals, the elaborate keystones, and the portal's foliage all belong to the golden hour of the national art.

For the student it is the choir of the church (c. 1135), built by the prior who surrounded the monastery lands with walls (1130-40), which is of chief interest, for in it were taken marked strides in the advance of Gothic structure. Here first was attempted a double ambulatory, an idea which Suger within a few years was to carry out in its fulfillment at St. Denis. The Lady chapel, a lobed half dome--the sacred trefoil--developed further the ribbed apse first found at Bury (c.

1125); here the ribs are structural, not merely decorative. Like other monuments of the transitional hour, St. Martin used simultaneously intersecting ribs and groins, round and pointed arches. Its XIII-century nave was never vaulted.

The third monument of the capital which shows other stumbling first steps of the national art is the little church of St. Pierre under the towering new basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre.[89] Till the XII century there stood on the site of St. Pierre a church dedicated to St. Denis, for tradition said that the first martyr of Paris had here been interred until his relics were removed to the new abbey of St.

Denis on the Roman road outside Paris. In the crypt, by St. Peter's, on Montmartre, it is said that the earliest Christians of the region held their rites. And to that hallowed spot has come many a soul to beseech enlightenment on the eve of some projected good work. Here, in 1534, St.

Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and the first Jesuits pa.s.sed a night in prayer and vowed themselves to G.o.d's service. Here came St.

Francis de Sales before founding the Visitation Order, St. Vincent de Paul before founding the Lazarists, and M. Olier before he organized St.

Sulpice. Ursulines and Carmelites also have memories with St.

Pierre-de-Montmartre.

A Benedictine priory was installed here by Louis VI and his queen, Adelaide, niece of Pope Calixtus II of the Capetian house of Burgundy.

They began the present church as Romanesque, but soon the new system of vaulting was employed. Slowly but consecutively throughout the XII century St. Peter's church was built. Its oldest Gothic vault is the one over the section of the choir preceding the apse; the stout ribs have profiles like those which Abbot Suger was making about that same time in the forechurch of his abbatial.

The solemn dedication of St. Pierre-de-Montmartre took place in 1147 with Pope Eugene III officiating and St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable acting as deacon and subdeacon. Since the rebuilding of the apse, at the end of the XII century, numerous reconstructions have gone on in order to preserve the revered church.[90]

ST. LOUIS AND JOINVILLE[91]

Je dis que droit est mort et loyaute eteinte Quand le bon roi est mort, la creature sainte, A qui se pourront desormais les pauvres gens clamer Quand le bon roy est mort qui tant les sut aimer?

--REGRES DU ROY LOEYS.

The greatest glory of the Middle Ages was the saint-king himself. He was essentially of his epoch both in his love of theology and his enthusiasm for building. Under his grandfather, Philippe-Auguste, most of the Gothic cathedrals of France were begun. The majority of them continued building under Louis IX. In his reign Beauvais Cathedral was started, that of Meaux rebuilt, as was also St. Denis' cathedral-like abbatial.

There rose now a host of lesser Gothic edifices, such as the Sainte-Chapelle at Paris, the synodal hall at Sens, and the hospital hall at Ourscamp. "And as a writer who has made his book, illuminating it with gold and azure, so our king illuminated his kingdom with the beautiful abbeys he built," wrote his friend Joinville.

All too many of his abbatials have been swept away--Royaumont,[92] built with the proceeds from his father's jewels, where Louis IX had worked side by side with the masons, where he had pa.s.sed his saddest hours, for in its church was laid to rest his promising eldest son, whose beautiful tomb now is harbored at St. Denis. Gone, too, is Maubuisson Abbey, where was buried his mother, Blanche of Castile. Her bronze tomb was melted up and made into cannon during the Revolution, but one knows that the something high and Spanish in Blanche (whom her contemporaries compared to stag and eagle) would have preferred a cannon to the copper pennies into which were trans.m.u.ted all too many of the ancient tombs. The mother of St. Louis was a woman cast in a heroic mold, daughter of that Spanish king who at Las Navas de Toloso saved Europe from an avalanche of 400,000 Mussulmans and granddaughter of art-loving Alienor of Aquitaine and Henry II, Plantagenet.

The prudence of Blanche of Castile saved the kingdom for her son against the insurgent barons of France. She hastened to have him crowned at Rheims, in 1226, in the same year that St. Francis died, in Italy. It is said that the lad of twelve held up firmly the sword of the Emperor Charlemagne, whose blood ran in his veins. The barons tried to kidnap the young king from his mother, and when he escaped the snare and rode back to Paris all the countryside poured out to bless him. Years later he told Joinville it was from that hour he dedicated himself to the welfare of his people.

In 1234, at twenty, he was married in Sens Cathedral to a princess of the cultivated house of Provence; Dante has a line for the daughters of Raymond Berenger IV, patron of the troubadours: "Four daughters had he and each a queen."[93] Marguerite of Provence was somewhat overridden by the stronger personality of Blanche, her mother-in-law. For his valiant mother, Louis IX retained always a pa.s.sionate admiration. On his first crusade he left his kingdom in her charge, which, however, he did not do for his queen, when he last went crusading. He had seen her sister, on the throne of England, tamper with that country's interests for the advancement of her own family, and he recognized in his Marguerite a strain of the same intriguing. She could rise to her lord's level, however, and was his faithful lifelong companion. A sublime word of hers has come down to us: they were sailing back to France after four years'

sojourn in Palestine; off Cyprus the s.h.i.+p was well-nigh wrecked, and an attendant rushed to ask if he should awaken the royal children. "No,"

cried the queen, "let them go to G.o.d in their sleep."

That a king whose forebears had fought in all the crusades should, in his turn, strike a blow for Christendom, was inevitable. Jerusalem had fallen in 1244, and the instinct of Europe felt the menace of the Mongol advance from the East. Was not the fate of Spain close at hand to prove the possibility of Oriental invasion? So St. Louis took the crusader's vow, and with him went the turbulent lords whose departure gave France some needed years of peace. He had in vain tried to negotiate peace between Papacy and Empire, in whose protracted duel he remained neutral.

In Cyprus, in 1248, the crusaders paused before descending on Egypt, and there St. Louis and Joinville drew together. The hereditary seneschal of Champagne was a very great lord, his mother being of Burgundy's Capetian line, and his Joinville forebears notable crusaders.[94] The contingent which he provided for the holy wars consisted of nine knights and seven hundred men, but because of the long winter's halt in Cyprus he found himself in straits to meet their expenses. Louis IX, ten years his senior, came to his aid, although the ruler of Champagne and not the king of France was Joinville's suzerain. Side by side the two friends went through the disastrous campaign in Egypt--the delayed march on Cairo, which ended in Mansourah's defeat. Together they shared imprisonment, and the king's elevation of soul won the Mussulmans'

respect. Then, their ransom paid, they sailed together for Palestine, and there, in the daily intimacy of years, the affection of these two loyal knights struck deep root. To Joinville the king intrusted his wife and children in the perilous overland journey in Syria, before they embarked for France.

When, in 1254, Louis IX came back from the East, he gave himself up for fifteen years to his country's welfare, "the most conscientious man who ever sat on a throne," touched to the core by that divine unrest which is man's highest faculty and does lasting work for G.o.d, revered by the "little people of the Lord" as their champion for justice and social progress. "_Il est en doulce France un bon roy Loeys_," sang the minstrels then. Never did king love more _la doulce France_ and prove it more conclusively. Justice was inherent in him. A most sensitive feeling of duty ruled his every act. Yet he knew how to mete out deserved punishment unflinchingly. From his shrewd and capable grandfather, so little of a saint, he had learned that no one could govern well who could not refuse as well as grant.

That Louis IX understood his age is shown in his dealings with the feudal system. He made no attempt to destroy it, which would then have been impossible, and, moreover, his respect for the rights of others always kept him from extreme measures; but he regulated its excesses, knowing that organized anarchy could be broken only by organized laws.

One of the best laws he pa.s.sed was that of the _quarantaine-le-roy_, which forbade any baron to wage war on his fellows without a notice of forty days. The king favored the written law to offset the law of custom, on which feudal abuses were based. During a generation he had his agents all over France collect old laws and customs--Roman law, canon law, feudal privileges, and from their composite ma.s.s was created the great code called the _etabliss.e.m.e.nts de St. Louis_. He subst.i.tuted jurisprudence by inquest, and witnesses for that by force, and he made a supreme court by inst.i.tuting the right of appeal. Admirable were some of his treaties such as that which made the Pyrenees the natural boundary between Spain and France. His reform of the coinage was another link of unity for France.

In Paris he organized a police, protected commerce by regulations, put an end to the selling of magistratures, and he began, there, the library which to-day is the richest in Europe. In the garden of the Cite and under the oaks of Vincennes, the king held open courts of justice, and when his youngest brother, Charles d'Anjou,[95] tried to browbeat one of lesser rank, the king gave a legal councilor to the poor knight who won the case against the prince. Louis IX's very enemies chose him as arbiter. Little wonder that the people of France have sung of him:

Ha! le bon Roy!

Simples, ignorans supportait Pauvres, mendians confortait, Observant de Jhusys la foi, Redoutant Dieu-- Ha! le bon Roy!

Joinville has drawn for all time the picture of the years between the saint-king's two crusades, a golden age, if ever there was one. The friends.h.i.+p begun during their years of Syrian comrades.h.i.+p continued, and the seneschal often came up to Paris. It was he who arranged the marriage of the king's daughter with his own suzerain, the son of Thibaut IV, the song maker, in whose court of Champagne Joinville had acquired his delightful mode of speech.

Then, again, came the call of the East. Jaffa and Antioch had fallen to Islam, and the condition of the Oriental Christians was heartrending.