How France Built Her Cathedrals Part 14

Louis IX could not resist their cry for aid. In 1270, twenty-two years after his first departure from Aigues-Mortes, the king sailed again from that half-finished fort by the dead waters. Joinville was not with him, for he was needed by his "little people," an excuse which his friend acknowledged.

The crusaders had scarcely landed on the coast of Africa when plague struck them down. First died Tristan, the son born to St. Louis in the sorrowful, earlier days in Egypt. Then the saint-king himself pa.s.sed away; and on his lips was the prayer that his race might learn to despise the prosperity of this world and not to fear adversity, and that France might never deny the name of Christ. The night before he died they heard him singing, "_Nous irons en Jerusalem_," the holy city he had never seen, the aspiration, the magic name that stirred those strong generations.[96] Before the century closed the Church canonized him.

"House of France," announced the pope, "rejoice to have given the world so great a prince, and to heaven so great a saint. People of France, rejoice to have had so great a king."

"If ever the golden age of the good old times existed," wrote Sainte-Beuve, "it certainly was under St. Louis, and it is by the pen of Joinville that it exists for us. They believed then in their king, they believed above all in their G.o.d, as if G.o.d were present in the smallest occurrences of daily life." In the _Histoire de St. Louis_ by Jean, sire de Joinville, there is not a mawkish note, and considering what happens to too many saints in their biographies, it must be acknowledged that the seneschal accomplished a feat. As depicted by his contemporaries, Louis IX is so convincingly himself that later efforts to stereotype him as the sacristan's ideal of piety have failed. His "pleasant manner of speech seasoned with wit" had nothing of the prig in it. From his childhood to his deathbed of ashes in ancient Carthage (birthplace of his favorite Augustine), St. Louis possessed a direct personal touch with G.o.d. "_Beau Sire Dieu, garde-moi mes gens!_" he rose at night to pet.i.tion with insistent outstretched arms when, in Egypt, the "Greek fire" was hurled into the Christian camp. And Joinville, who had a wholesome dread of the Saracens' projectiles, turned to rest, feeling secure while such prayers were beseeching Heaven.

Louis IX was a tireless student of the Bible and works of the Church Fathers. He had a pa.s.sion for the liturgy. The number of hours which he spent in prayer has roused the sarcasm of our indifferent generation.

His hours before the Tabernacle bore fruit in deeds. His temper was naturally quick, and he had a keen sense of irony, but his friend, the seneschal, was able to bear witness, at his canonization process, that in an intimacy of over twenty years never had he heard a word of disparagement of others fall from the king's lips. "There was something in the mere sight of him that found a way to the heart and affections,"

wrote one who knew him; "the eyes of a dove," said another. "He seemed pierced to the heart with pity for the unfortunate," wrote Queen Marguerite's chaplain who had daily intercourse with him. An observant Italian who saw the king on his way to his first crusade described the something of rare refinement and grace in his bearing.

Not a touch of self-consciousness was in Louis; barefooted, in a white tunic, he carried the Crown of Thorns through the streets of Paris. In his sublime other-worldliness, he bathed the feet of beggars, dressed the sores of lepers, and when he felt that his soul needed it he scourged himself. And at the same time he was a model of knightly prowess, who many a time had fought

For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field, Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens.[97]

At the battle of Mansourah, Joinville saw the king, "the most beautiful of men," to his eyes, fair, gallant, in stature head and shoulders above those around him, defend himself alone with great slas.h.i.+ng sword cuts from the onslaught of six paynims. He was a true _prud'homme_, a name for which he had a weakness, for to be a _prud'homme_ meant to be a knight, not only bodily, but in one's soul.

Side by side with his other-worldliness went a sound practical sense.

When his son-in-law, Thibaut V of Champagne, gave overgenerously to a monastery in Provins, all the while that he was in debt, St. Louis asked him was it fair to bestow alms with other people's money. His personal tastes were unostentatious, but he held court sumptuously when the occasion required, and he advised his lords to dress well so that their wives would love them better. He was ever human; when word came to him in Palestine that the mother he adored had died in France, he shut himself away from sympathy for two days, then sent for the friend he loved best. As Joinville approached, the king opened his arms to him with the cry, "Ah, seneschal, I have lost my mother!"

Joinville has recounted a scene which took place between him and his friend, that is one of the fairest things in literature, slight episode though it is. In council, in Palestine, the barons urged the king to return to France. Almost alone, Joinville held out against such a course while their retainers were still unredeemed from captivity. For he remembered how a knight of his family had admonished him: "You are going beyond the seas. Be careful how you come back. For no knight, rich or poor, can return an honored man if he leaves in Saracen hands the humble folk of Our Lord with whom he started forth."

The king listened in silence at the council, and in silence sat through the banquet that followed, paying no heed to Joinville, who was placed by his side. The seneschal, saddened by what he thought to be his friend's displeasure, was standing alone, leaning against a cas.e.m.e.nt, thinking that when the others returned to France, he would join the Prince of Antioch, his cousin, till another crusade came to deliver the "little people of the Lord" unransomed still in Egypt. As he leaned against the window bars he felt friendly arms laid about his shoulders: "Have done, Monseigneur," he cried, thinking it was one of the barons come to mock him, "leave me in peace." Then the loving hands slipped over his face and he recognized the emerald ring worn by the king. The dear words of mock reproach: "What you, the youngest, dare advise me against all the great and the wise men of France? Tell me, you think I would do wrong in leaving?" Then st.u.r.dy Joinville, who paints his friend, too, by the confession, "Never did I lie to him," made answer, "Yes, Sire, as G.o.d is my aid." "And if I stay, will you stay?" asked the king.

The bloom of the exquisite moment has come to us across the dividing centuries because Joinville was not thinking of making a book when he wrote his reminiscences. His object was to have others understand the gracious distinction, the tender familiarity with him of this king-crusader whom he loved and who loved him. Written artlessly, and in entire good faith, his book is full of that indefinable quality called charm. The seneschal's honest heart is in its infinitely precious pages.

In that other early monument of French prose, the grave Villehardouin rises to the historian's plane in depicting the Fourth Crusade.

Joinville cannot be said to have taken in the Sixth Crusade as a whole; he muddles the battle scenes; he digresses to right and to left in idle details, then catches himself up with happy ease, as if saying, "Dear me! I forgot to mention," imparting to his chronicle an inimitable quality all its own. No one would have Joinville different. Amiable, jocund, unaffected, the soul of honor, candor itself, he does not fear to acknowledge that he could tremble with fright in battle despite his stalwart six feet and over. He beguiled his captivity by trying to convert a Mohammedan by highly colored descriptions of h.e.l.l. He whiled away the long hours in Syria in composing a treatise of theology, a _Credo_, wherein he warns every _prud'homme_ to hold on to G.o.d with both arms lest that felon, the devil, come between. And the two arms by which a man was to hold on to G.o.d were Faith and Good Works. "You must have both, if you wish to keep G.o.d: one without the other is worthless,"

warns the young seneschal. No quibbling then!

Joinville had also that quality which the French term _enjouement_, hard to translate, a playful, most lovable frankness, a mocking vivacity which was for St. Louis a source of relaxation. The king loved conversation; he thought there was no book so good as _quolibet_, or say what you please. Some Armenian pilgrims besought of the seneschal a glimpse of the saint-king. Joinville came merrily to tell his friend, warning him that he, the seneschal, was not yet prepared to kiss his bones. And the king laughed, too, but because he knew it would give the devout Armenians pleasure, he accorded them an interview. Stroke by stroke, Joinville filled in the picture of Louis IX, and all the while he unconsciously paints himself as well. He is so eager to make you love his hero that you learn to love himself. A tear is always close to the eye in reading Joinville, not that what he relates is sad, but because this story of a high soul, written by his loyal friend, touches things that lie deep in all true hearts.

Joinville was to survive his friend for half a century. He died in 1317.

With a character ripened by six years of intimacy with the _bon saint-homme roy_, he came back from the East and set himself to work for his people's welfare, the "little people of the Lord" by whom he had stood in their hour of need. He was then but thirty. In his old age he was the accepted arbiter of good taste, admired as the last of a generation of courtesy. When over ninety, this vigorous old crusader rode into Flanders on a military expedition for the crown. He had seen the reigns of six French kings and the pa.s.sing away of the crusader's spirit. He had seen his own Champagne become a part of the royal domain, when the heiress Jeanne was married to the grandson of St. Louis. And it was at the bidding of that queen of Philippe-le-Bel that Joinville wrote down his memories of Louis IX.

France has high advocates to plead for her before the Throne in hours of national peril. Jeanne d'Arc said that she saw St. Louis pet.i.tioning G.o.d in the dire hour of foreign invasion. "May they never deny Thy name,"

prayed the saint-king at Tunis, as he rendered "his pure soul unto his captain, Christ, under whose colors he had fought so long." And in the men of 1914-18, true _prud'hommes_ after the heart of St. Louis and his dear friend Joinville, stirred the crusader blood of their ancestors.

THE COLLEGIATE OF MANTES[98]

The king was very well built, of easy bearing and smiling countenance, bald, high-colored, a great eater and drinker. Toward his friends he was most generous; toward those who displeased him he was very firm; in his designs he was foresighted and tenacious, very catholic in his beliefs, and he judged rapidly and with great perspicacity. Easy to arouse, he was also easy to appease. Upon the great who disobeyed him he was hard, and he enjoyed sowing discord among them, and to make use of the little people in his purposes.--Portrait of Philippe-Auguste by a canon of St. Martin, Tours.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Notre Dame of Mantes (1160-1200). The Contemporary of Paris Cathedral_]

From Paris can best be visited the cathedral-like collegiate at Mantes on the Seine to the east, and the cathedral of Meaux on the Marne to the west. Mantes-la-Jolie, the "well-beloved" city of Philippe-Auguste, and where he died in 1223, is set picturesquely above the Seine, in whose widened course are wooded islands. From the bridge crossing the river[99] may be had the best view of the town. The collegiate church of Notre Dame stands above the houses of the pleasant little city, in the high-shouldered way of many a French church. Happily, it has never been reconstructed. It has various traits in common with Notre Dame of Paris, and some think that the same architect planned both.

Mantes' Primary Gothic church was begun about 1160, at the same time as the cathedral in the capital, but, being on a lesser scale, it was finished sooner, and thus appears more archaic. Normandy's Romanesque zigzag ornamentation was still retained, and the cells of certain vault sections show the hesitating rough work of masons as yet unpracticed.

While the transverse arches are pointed, those of the diagonal-crossing ribs are round. Too wide an expanse of plain wall s.p.a.ce was left between tribune and clearstory, for it was to take half a century longer before architects dared fill their entire upper wall with windows. Like Notre Dame of Paris, the tribunes open on the middle church by wide, graceful arches. And this smaller Notre Dame also has western towers that are connected by an open colonnade. The collegiate has no transept, and one recalls that neither had Paris Cathedral in its first plan. The flying b.u.t.tresses here are among the first ever made. A striking feature of the exterior of the church is the row of little oculi that light the tribunes over the aisles, some of which have been changed to windows of Rayonnant tracery. The deep galleries once were entirely vaulted by transverse half cradles borne on low lintels, an experiment in masonry roofing first tried at Tournus, but which never became popular; at Caen the tribunes of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes had been vaulted by similar half cylinders whose axial lines were at right angles to that of the nave.

The first Gothic rose window of big dimensions adorns the west facade of Mantes collegiate. It is what they call plate tracery--that is, the pattern is formed of voids, the window being a group of variously shaped openings, and not, as in bar tracery, a single opening with the pattern made by solids, or stone mullions. The western rose at Laon stands halfway between plate and bar tracery. Mantes' rose was the prototype for that at Chartres.

Like most of the larger XII-century churches, the s.e.xpart.i.te system of vaulting was used. Mantes also followed Noyon and Senlis in having alternating piers and, like Noyon, it showed the Rhenish trait of a western transept, formed by the two lower stories of the towers and the westernmost bay of the middle vessel. Two of the portals are of the XII century, but the largest--the one under the south tower--was made by Raymond du Temple. And probably that same XIV-century architect of Charles V added the gracious chapel of Navarre which is among the best works of Rayonnant Gothic. In it are four charming statuettes of the donors, the princesses of Navarre, portrait work showing personal mannerisms. When the sister of the art-loving Valois king, Charles V, married Charles the Wicked (a scion of Capetian stock who was count in evreux and king in Navarre) she brought the town of Mantes in her dowry, and it was probably her daughters who are sculptured in this chapel of Navarre--their gift to Mantes collegiate.

On the site of the present church once stood a Romanesque edifice built by funds donated by William the Conqueror on his deathbed, to atone for his having set fire to the ancient church (1087). Angered by a coa.r.s.e joke of the French king's, he had sworn his usual oath, "by the splendor and resurrection of G.o.d," that he would light a hundred thousand candles when he went to his churching Ma.s.s; so he marched against his tormentor and set fire to Mantes that lay in his path. For, as Mr. Henry Adams has picturesquely expressed it, "Mantes barred the path of Norman conquest in arms, as in architecture." As the corpulent Conqueror rode around the place, his horse stumbled, and from the injury then received he died in Rouen in a few weeks. That burning of Mantes by the Duke of Normandy and King of England has been called the prelude to the Hundred Years' War between France and England, whose actual span was from 1337 to 1453. And in a way Waterloo was its epilogue. The shoulder-to-shoulder fight of the ancient rivals, from 1914 to 1918, let us hope, has put the seal on their pact of peace.

THE CATHEDRAL OF MEAUX[100]

Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ!

White Hors.e.m.e.n who ride on white horses, the Knights of G.o.d!

They, for their Lord and their Lover have sacrificed All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod!

These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night, Swept, and they wake in white places at morningtide....

Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go; White Hors.e.m.e.n who ride on white horses, oh, fair to see!

They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow, White Hors.e.m.e.n, with Christ their Captain: forever He!

--LIONEL JOHNSON, _Te Martyrum Candidatus_.[101]

To decipher Meaux Cathedral has been a student's _tour-de-force_, so early and unceasing have been its rebuildings. With Troyes and Seez, it was the only Gothic cathedral that had a flaw in its structure. Begun with the choir, in the last decades of the XII century, it still retained the Romanesque idea of deep galleries over the side aisles.

Whether poor foundations were laid or whether the tribune vaults were made too c.u.mbersome, the edifice gave signals of insecurity from the start.

As the XIII century opened, the transept and that part of the nave near it were building with the tribunes still, although by that time such galleries had fallen into disuse. Repeated restorations delayed the works. Cracks continued to show until, about 1270, when the collapse of the whole church was threatened, a complete reconstruction was undertaken by Bishop Jean de Poincy.

Already, in 1220, the choir had been redone and two more chapels added, making five apsidioles in all. In 1270 they demolished throughout the church the tribunes over the side aisles, and thus the aisles became twice their intended height. In the first three bays of the choir were retained the arches of the tribune, so that now certain bays of the choir aisles open on the central vessel by pier arcades surmounted by false-tribune arches. Striking effect is made in the nave by some giant cylinder piers whose height is double what was originally planned and whose capitals are gems of interpretative sculpture, vine leaf and fern.

Much mechanical dexterity was shown in the recutting of piers and the elimination of the tribunes, but even now a few of the shorter columns are to be found embedded in the newer parts, and a few sections of the triforium show their primitive plan.

By the time Meaux Cathedral was completed it was practically an edifice of the end of the XIII century. Its chief patroness was the queen of Philippe-le-Bel (St. Louis' grandson), the Jeanne of Champagne who brought that rich province to the Crown, as well as the kingdom of Navarre, the same princess who encouraged Joinville to write his reminiscences. The city of Meaux was in her dowry, and they say that her portrait was carved on a keystone of the choir. When she died, in 1305, she named the bishop of Meaux as her executor and donated a legacy to his church.

A well-known XIV-century architect, Nicolas de Chaumes, worked on the west facade, two of whose portals are of that period, and one of the XV century. Unfortunately, use was made of a soft stone which time has sadly eroded. Flamboyant Gothic sculpture, with foliage in gracious disorder, appears in the western bays: the undulating flora of the XIV century, and the nervous, deeply indented, pointed leaves of the XV century when such complicated forms as the curly cabbage were taken as models. Wiser were the earlier sculptors who had interpreted and arranged their leaves with architectural fitness. The south portal of Meaux's transept must have had in mind St. Stephen's door of the cathedral at Paris. At Meaux the sculptured figures show certain mannerisms, such as the throwing out of one hip, a trait soon to be exaggerated. The carvings throughout the church were mutilated by the Huguenots in 1562, and from that date no further work was done on the edifice. One tower of the facade remains painfully stunted.

The church of Meaux would stand well in the front rank of Gothic cathedrals were it not for certain flaws of proportion. Such exceptionally high side aisles call for a nave twice as long, and the clearstory appears dwarfed by the lofty pier arcades of the chevet. Yet though made piecemeal, and without uniformity of style in its main parts, Meaux possesses a unity of its own, and its effect as a whole is one of elegance and even radiance.

The tomb of its greatest bishop is an immense slab of marble in the pavement of the choir. Bossuet devoted himself to his diocese for over twenty years (1681-1704). Frequently he preached in the cathedral built by the generosity of Jeanne of Champagne, the founder of the College of Navarre, where he had studied in his youth. There is something akin in Meaux Cathedral to the high soul and courtliness of Bossuet. The two most religious and national epochs in French history were the XIII and XVII centuries.

Few churches in France present a better setting for a festival of solemn joy than the cathedral of Meaux. It is the church for _Noel_, for the white radiance of First Communion gatherings, for the _Te Deum_ of victory. Fitting is it that the victory of the Marne should here have become a personal heritage. At the very gates of Meaux came the turning of the tide on September 5, 1914, when the thunderous advance on Paris was suddenly arrested. The pa.s.sword for that day of miracle was "Jeanne d'Arc." Near by, on the Oureq, Jeanne's troubadour, Peguy,[102] fell on that same September 5th, he who had chanted prophetically:

_Heureux ceux qui sont mort pour une juste guerre ..._ _Heureux les epis murs et les bles moissonnes,_ _Heureux ceux qui sont mort dans les grandes batailles,_ _Couches dessus le sol a la face de Dieu._

Close to Meaux the battle raged outside, and the wounded, in bewildering numbers, were carried into the desolated town which lacked a civic head.

The bishop of Meaux, Monseigneur Marbeau, stepped forth as the accepted leader, as in the time of those earlier invasions when the bishops of Gaul saved Latin civilization.

Again, in 1918, the invader drew perilously near, and a second victory of the Marne swept back the avalanche. From the fields around the city forever will an invisible white army of martyrs swell this cathedral's _Te Deum_. In Meaux on the Marne, G.o.d will always be the omnipotent Lord G.o.d of Battles, the _Dominus Deus Sabaoth_ of the great hymn of thanksgiving.[103]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Cathedral of Meaux, Viewed from the Nave's Aisle_]

CHAPTER V

Era of the Great Cathedrals, Chartres, Rheims, Amiens