How France Built Her Cathedrals Part 42

Near St. Thegonnec, at Guimiliau, is another Calvary (1581), and another ossuary and triumphal arch. The capacious church porch is lined with statues of the apostles. At Carhaix, Pleyben (1650), Cronan, and Penmarc'h, are Calvaries, and that at Lampaul is united in the same composition with the graveyard's triumphal arch. Brittany's most imposing _Calvaire_, and the most wonderful wayside shrine ever made, comprising over two hundred images in all, is at Plougastel-Daoulas, a memorial of the epidemic of 1598. The greenish Kersanton granite of which it is made is quarried close by in the harbor of Brest, and acquires with time the endurance and appearance of bronze. Breton peasants are represented playing on Breton pipes in the Entry-into-Jerusalem scene. Late comers these rough-hewn sculptures may be in the national art, but in so far as character goes they might easily belong to the XII or XIII century.

The theorist may say that the racial exclusiveness of Brittany is one of the reasons why it has not excelled in architecture and the kindred arts. That may be so. The chief concern of the Celt has ever been to save his soul. The architectural purist is p.r.o.ne to carp at Breton Gothic, and some even dare say that the Kreisker itself errs, in that its shaft is not sufficiently welded with its spire. Without a doubt the absence of symmetry in many churches of the ancient province is at first disturbing, but soon one comprehends that one travels in Brittany not for its architecture, but for the unconquerable soul of a people who, while devoted to tradition, have ever stood up uncowed, unswerving in their antagonism to despotism. The sensitive traveler--that is, the man with kindly, plain loyalties--will let himself grow attached to the mediocre, irregular churches of this individual land.

Some of those irregularities are startling enough. The pilgrimage church of Guingamp has a curious two-storied triforium, and flying b.u.t.tresses inside the choir over the aisles. Its nave is an amalgam, one wall Gothic and its vis-a-vis a fluted-pilastered Renaissance affair. The sculptor gave his initiative full scope in the apostle's porch--a revered spot on the days of Guingamp's famous pardon, that precedes the first Sunday of July. At Dinan, in the church of St. Sauveur--in whose transept is treasured the heart of Duguesclin, born not far away--a Romanesque wall faces a Flamboyant Gothic one. In the corsair stronghold of St. Malo,[377] breeder of strong men, the cathedral's walls make no pretense to be parallel.

The Breton has been too engrossed in keeping warm in his churches the spirit of devotion to bother about such details as symmetry. Eagerly he added chapel to chapel, aisle to aisle, regardless how difficult it might be for a stranger to orient himself on entering. The wise traveler will accept Brittany as she is, for if he does not, Brittany, like Spain, will exasperate him by her tranquil indifference to his criticisms. On a mediaeval tower of the castle at St. Malo was inscribed:

Grumble who will.

So shall it be As pleases me.[378]

THE CATHEDRAL AT DOL-EN-BRETAGNE[379]

Bretagne, o mon pays, garde ta foi nave, Car Dieu se plait surtout dans la simplicite; C'est comme le miroir d'une source d'eau vive, Ou vient se reflechir, l'astre de verite.

--JOSEPH ROUSSE, _Poesies bretonnes_.

Brittany may be a land of shrines more than of churches; nevertheless, some five of its former nine bishoprics are of interest in the Gothic story--Dol, Nantes, Quimper, St. Pol-de-Leon, and Treguier.

The hardy outpost of Dol, in the north, has stood many a siege, fought many a battle, and its church walls are crenelated where they face the city ramparts. The tutelary of the _ci-devant_ cathedral is St. Samson, whose name keeps alive the memory of the arrival of the hara.s.sed Celts of Britain who poured "like a torrent" into Armorica during the dark centuries of the Middle Ages when the migrations of the Barbarians had wiped out Rome's civilization in England. In Dol's great eastern window, St. Samson and some monk companions are shown crossing the Channel.

The cathedral of Dol--which Stendhal admired beyond others in France--is a melancholy severe granite edifice, though probably the best Gothic of the province. Characteristics both of Normandy and the Ile-de-France appear in it. Two of the wholly detached colonnettes of each pier are now clamped with metal bands, and the wide arches of the triforium would be better suited to open on a gallery than as they are at present--set close to a blank wall; a few doors in the wall give on the lean-to roof over the aisles. The structure of the church demonstrates that, as the works rose, extra supports were added for stability.

The cathedral was begun by its nave soon after a conflagration of the town, in 1203, caused by the troops of John Lackland. Vestiges only of the wrecked church were retained. The facade's southern tower is late work, despite its Romanesque character, and its fellow belfry to the north is in larger part of the XVI century. Out of the nave's southern flank opens a graceful XIII-century porch. The choir, which ends in a flat eastern wall, was finished by 1265, when was installed its splendid big window of eight medallion panels that set forth the Last Judgment.

In the XIV century was opened the arch leading to the Lady chapel of that same date, wherein were used various supplementary ribs, around windows and in corners, to obviate the difficulty of vaulting a square-ended edifice. To the XIV century, too, belong the side chapels of the choir, and the big porch of St. Magloire before the transept's southern door.

Against the blank wall that closes the north arm of the transept stands the much-discussed Renaissance tomb of Bishop Thomas James. It is an initial work of the Juste brothers of Tours, the ablest among the Italians who brought the new art standards across the Alps. The bishop's rec.u.mbent image has disappeared. From 1482 to 1504 he held the see of Dol, though only in residence after 1486, as he lived in Rome, the papal guardian of the castle of St. Angelo. In his testament he requested a simple burial, but his nephews--whose profiles adorn the tomb--chose to erect this elaborate monument, whose cream-colored fine-grained stone, delicately arabesqued, contrasts happily with the dark granite walls.

One of the nephews had known the Juste, or Betti brothers, in Florence, and through him those artists came to France. In his prime Jean Juste made the tomb of Louis XII and Anne of Brittany for the Royal Abbey at St. Denis.

THE CATHEDRAL AT NANTES[380]

Tres crestien, franc royaume de France, Dieu a les braz ouvers pour t'acoler, Prest d'oublier ta vie pecheresse: Requier pardon, bien te vendra aidier Nostre Dame, la tres puissante princesse, Qui est ton cry et que tiens pour maistresse.

Les saints aussy te viendront secourir, Desquelz les corps font en toy demourance.

Ne vueilles plus en ton pechie dormir Tres crestien, franc royaume de France!

--CHARLES D'ORLeANS (1391-1465).

The cathedral of St. Peter, at Nantes, the third on the site, is a late-Gothic structure, not overvirile, somewhat artificial, but ingenious and elegant, even as is the contemporary verse of Charles d'Orleans, who was taken prisoner at Agincourt and pa.s.sed half a lifetime in exile. M. Gaston Paris has drawn attention to the similarity between XV-century architecture and XV-century poetry. Is not that bijou of artistry, the chapel of St. Hubert, which Anne of Brittany's first husband set on the cliff edge at Amboise, of the same quality as a rondel of the poet-duke's? Is not Villon's ironic, tragically-true note reflected in the Dance of Death painted on church walls during those years of pest and internecine strife? Brittany has retained one of the only two surviving _danses macabres_, in the hamlet of Kermaria,[381]

the house of Mary, that lies between the villages of Plehedel and Plouha. In Auvergne, at La Chaise Dieu, is the other.

In 1431 Jean V, of the third ducal line of Brittany, the de Montforts, decided to remake the cathedral of the outpost city wherein stood his castle. Nantes never was _Bretagne bretonnante_, being differentiated from Finistere amid its rocky seacoast, by its position on the Loire of commerce and art. That wonderful river, in an eight-hundred-mile course from Languedoc to Brittany, pa.s.ses some of the fairest monuments of France: Le Puy, Nevers, La Charite, St. Satur, St. Benoit, Orleans, Blois, Chaumont, Amboise, Tours, Langeais--where Anne of Brittany wedded Charles VIII--Saumur, St. Florent, Gennes, Cunault, and the castle and cathedral of Nantes.

Under ducal patronage the nave of Nantes Cathedral rose apace; the capitals of its north side have deeply undercut curly-tipped foliage, but on the nave's south side the piers lack capitals altogether. The interior of the church is of glacial aspect; light floods it pitilessly.

Its eastern end is modern. In 1886 was unearthed a Romanesque crypt which Abelard must have known, for he was born in a manor close by Nantes, and returned to live here in 1136.

Guillaume Dammartin, of the notable family of Flamboyant Gothic architects, is mentioned as working on Nantes Cathedral, and M. Arthur de la Borderic, Brittany's historian, has discovered that an artist of Tours, Mathelin Rodier, was master-of-works when the western portals were sculptured (1470-80), and while the stately inner-court facade of the duke's chateau was rising. In that castle Anne of Brittany was born in 1477, became a reigning d.u.c.h.ess at twelve years of age, and in its chapel was married, in 1499, to Louis XII. On her deathbed she willed her heart to her native city. She completed the castle of Nantes by what is called the Horseshoe Tower overlooking the river.

Anne must have known the master, Mathelin Rodier, who made the portals of the cathedral, decorating them with the same undercut leaf foliation, the same lavish splayed ornaments as adorn the contemporary western doors of Tours Cathedral, a hundred and thirty miles to the east. The larger statues at Nantes' entrances have been destroyed, but in the voussures are many small groups, sometimes with four or five personages in a scene, chiseled with natural att.i.tudes and expressive faces. One of the portals commemorates St. Peter (observe the _Quo Vadis_ episode), another, St. Paul, while the place of honor is given to the Saviour.

Within the church, under the organ, are XV-century statues, one of which represents the duke patron who began the cathedral, the grandfather of Anne of Brittany.

Through the filial piety of Anne, her birthplace possesses the _canto cygni_ of Gothic sculpture, "the most unscathed monument of the Middle Ages," intact because it was taken apart and buried during the Revolution. The tomb of Anne's parents, Francis II, the last duke of Brittany, and his d.u.c.h.ess, is the work of a Breton, for an authentic ma.n.u.script has proved that Michel Colombe was born in Finistere, within sight of the Kreisker. His genius was fortified by long years pa.s.sed in the art atmosphere of Tours, and strengthened, too, by the Flemish realism which had come into France by way of the Dijon school that led the first half of the XV century, even as the school of Tours, whose chief master was Colombe, led its latter half. Nor did this Breton, fecundated by Touraine and st.u.r.dy Burgundy, ignore the incoming Italian culture, as is shown by his preference for ideal beauty over absolute realism: Celt, Teuton, and Latin--all were needed for the making of the last of the great Gothic masters, one who held loyally to the spiritual essence of the Middle Ages in a day when Renaissance pomp was fast rising to supremacy.

Michel Colombe was seventy years of age when Anne of Brittany, on a visit to Tours shortly after her second marriage, commissioned him to make a mausoleum for her parents, for which she had imported white marble from Genoa, and black from Liege. From 1502 to 1507 Colombe worked on the larger images, in his studio at Tours. His are the rec.u.mbent figures of the duke and d.u.c.h.ess, and the entrancing little angels who support their headcus.h.i.+on, ministering with the same loving willingness as the XII-century angels of Senlis' lintel. From Colombe's master hand are the four allegorical figures at the corners of the tomb, robust and graceful women, of the local type to be seen in central France to-day. They typify qualities of the defunct, Fort.i.tude, Temperance, Prudence, and Justice--this last image said to be a study from d.u.c.h.ess Anne herself.

Centuries later a similar arrangement of symbolic figures was used by Paul Dubois for his n.o.ble tomb of General de Lamoriciere (a son of Nantes), which balances, in the north arm of the transept, the ducal tomb to the south. Valor, Faith, Charity, and History, are the four corner statues that commemorate the pioneer of civilization in French Africa, who was so loved by the natives that he went freely among them unarmed, a modern hero who proved himself a true Breton by a.s.suming the leaders.h.i.+p of a lost cause.

Lesser masters of the school of Tours worked on the noted ducal tomb of Nantes; Guillaume Regnault made the small images and Jerome of Fiesole the arabesques, the same two masters who composed the tomb of the children of Anne of Brittany and Charles VIII, now in the cathedral at Tours. And when Michel Colombe had finished his statues, Anne had the Lyons master, Jean Perreal, one of the most active agents in popularizing in France the new art standards of Italy, visit Nantes to supervise the erection of the mausoleum whose ordinance he had designed.

THE CATHEDRAL OF QUIMPER[382]

Ce qui me charme en toi, Quimper de Cornouailles, C'est ton coeur paysan sous tes airs de cite.

--ANATOLE LE BRAZ.

Like the chief church at St. Pol-de-Leon, and that of Treguier, St.

Corentin at Quimper is "widowed of its bishop." Admirably situated, it stands with all the dignity of a cathedral above the pleasant little "river city of gables and fables," which etches itself on the memory. It is a well-cared-for shrine, full of warm Breton piety, seen at its richest during the pardon gatherings of August 15th.

Bishop Rainaud laid the first stone of Quimper Cathedral in 1239. Its ambulatory copied a disposition first used in Soissons Cathedral, but repeated only here and at Bayonne, though across the Rhine it became popular. The vault ribs of each chapel meet in the same keystone as the ribs of that section of the procession path on which the chapel opens.

About 1280 a little shrine, which had stood in the rear of the cathedral, separated from it by a lane, was joined to the ambulatory of the new Gothic choir by means of a canted bay. This improvised Lady chapel increased the irregular alignment of the church. The deviation of Quimper's axis is extraordinary. Standing in its central aisle, at the rear of the nave, you cannot see the first of the three bays that usually are apparent at the apse curve, and such is the bend of the choir that its southern aisle possesses one more bay than does the aisle to the north. When the time came to replace the Romanesque nave by the actual one, that new Gothic edifice might have straightened somewhat the axial line by following the false orientation of the choir. But apparently the proximity of the episcopal quarters prevented this being done.

The choir of St. Corentin retains the canopy-image windows of Jamin Sohier (1417), and the nave, those of the Jamin Sohier of a second generation; a western window is dated 1496. The s.h.i.+eld and helmet of one of Brittany's dukes of the Montfort line, Anne's immediate forebear, adorn the gable of the main facade. The cathedral works ceased during the first part of the Hundred Years' War; the choir was not roofed in stone till the first quarter of the XV century. In 1424 the nave was begun and the foundations of the west towers laid. Quimper's towers derive directly from the famous one of St. Pierre at Caen. There are the same deep, elongated twin-window recesses serving as b.u.t.tresses. After another period of inactivity, the cathedral's nave was vaulted. In the latter part of the XIX century the west towers received their crowning of crocketed spires, paid for by a popular collection called "the penny of St. Corentin."

How these dwellers by the sea love their obsolete local saints! How certain they are that to forget them is to lose infinitely precious links with the past. The solidarity of ancestors with descendants is no dead letter in Finistere, that lives not by bread alone. One knows that the white-coiffed women of Quimper--and their daily gathering in their mediaeval church makes a brave showing--would not love this shrine of St.

Corentin so well had it a name common to western Christendom. But St.

Corentin, St. Tugdual, St. Huec, St. Iltud, St. Budoc, St. Jacut, St.

Jubel, St. Gulstan, St. Comery--ah, those are the potent ones before the heavenly throne when a true Breton needs a.s.sistance!

THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. POL-DE-LeON[383]

O Dieu qui nous creas ou guerriers ou poetes, Sur la cote marins, et patres dans les champs, Sous les vils interets ne courbe pas nos tetes; Ne fais pas des Bretons un peuple de marchands.

J'ai vu, par l'avarice ennuyes et vieillis, Des barbares sans foi, sans coeur, sans esperance, Et, l'amour m'inspirait, j'ai chante mon pays.

--A. BRIZEUX, _L'elegie de la Bretagne_.

The most complete Gothic monument of Brittany is the whilom cathedral of St. Pol-de-Leon, one of the few important churches of the Middle Ages to be entirely carried out, with spired towers, and porches for the different needs of soul and body, one for catechumens, another for lepers. Its choir and nave differ strikingly in color and quality of stone. The nave of yellow sandstone was built first, and is decidedly the most artistic portion of the edifice. The florid Gothic choir is of gray granite.

As the XIII century closed the nave was begun, continuing building up to the dire times of the Hundred Years' War. It has the Norman traits of sculptured bands of academic design below triforium and clearstory, trefoils cut in the spandrels of arches, multiple arch molds, each with its own support, and a circulation pa.s.sage beneath the upper windows.

The triforium was begun elaborately, with much foliate decoration, but economy soon forced the architect to adopt a simpler plan. The nave's south aisle is double beyond the fourth bay where a porch opens, and the stones show that the outer aisle was originally a separate chamber, converted during the XV century into a pa.s.sageway.

The Flamboyant Gothic choir, that lacks the harmony and elegance of the nave, was built from 1439 to 1472. Chapel has been added to chapel, aisle to aisle, with the profusion loved by the Breton, who would press into G.o.d's service every foot of free land around his presbytery. The transept of the XII and XIII centuries was radically reconstructed during the late-Gothic day, retaining vestiges only of its Romanesque and early-Gothic work. It is doubtless to such repeated modelings that some of the b.u.t.tresses fail to correspond to columns and vault shafts.

During a siege of St. Pol-de-Leon by the English, the church called the Kreisker, "center of the city," was injured. When rebuilt, from 1345 to 1399, there was erected, between its nave and choir, carried merely on open arches, a grandiose tower modeled on Caen's belfry of St. Pierre, as had been the twin towers of St. Pol's cathedral, lesser in height than "the Kreisker." The deeply recessed lancet openings in each face of the giant beacon serve the practical purpose of b.u.t.tresses. Few cities can show three such brave towers as this little Breton town. "The Kreisker," mantled in golden lichen, is the pride of every Breton. So sure is its poise, so supple and strong, that for centuries all the wild storms of the ocean have swept unheeded through its open stonework spire. The popular songs love to extol it:

Je suis natif du Finistere, A Saint-Pol j'ai recu le jour, Mon clocher est l'plus beau d'la terre, Mon pays l'plus beau d'alentour; Rendez-moi ma bruyere et mon clocher a jour!

St. Pol received its name from another exile of Britain, and the good man's little bell is rung on the days of Pardon, over the heads of the people, who believe it can cure maladies of the mind. The Revolution tried to change the town's name to Port Pol, but the traditionalists and the independents that are the Bretons soon reverted to their St.

Pol-de-Leon.