How France Built Her Cathedrals Part 43

THE CATHEDRAL OF TReGUIER[384]

Une, deux generations peuvent oublier la Loi, se rendre coupable de tous les abandons, de toutes les ingrat.i.tudes. Mais il faut bien, a l'heure marquee que la chaine soit reprise et que la pet.i.te lampe vacillante brille de nouveau dans la maison.

--ERNEST PSICHARI (1883-1914).

The cathedral of St. Tugdual obtained its name from the founder of a local monastery, a nephew of St. Brieux, who had crossed from Britain with the returning missionary, St. Germain of Auxerre, and in Armorica had established a religious house which eventually gave its name to a Breton city. No church of the region demonstrates more clearly how difficult it is to obtain full Gothic effect with granite. Lacking sculpture, the art is necessarily abortive.

The interior of Treguier is dark and forbidding. The capitals of the graceless octagonal piers are merely uncut bands. There are Norman bal.u.s.trades and a Norman interior pa.s.sage below the clearstory lights.

The name of the architect, Goneder, was recently unearthed by M. de la Borderie. From the previous Romanesque cathedral was retained the Tour Hastings which now terminates the northern arm of the transept. Toward the western end of the church the molds of the archivolts die off in the piers.

The nave rose from 1296 to 1333; then came the pause of the Hundred Years' War. Building was resumed--always on the original Rayonnant lines--by Bishop Jean de Coetquis (1450-61), whose relative, of the same name, was finis.h.i.+ng the nave of Tours Cathedral. The charming Flamboyant cloisters of Treguier were made from 1461 to 1468, and with the Tour Hastings they compose one of the oft-sketched architectural groups of the country. St. Tugdual has suffered by wars and revolutions, being damaged by the English in 1347, by the Spaniards in 1592, the Liguers in 1594, and the Revolution's cyclone pa.s.sing here as elsewhere.

In the nave of Treguier Cathedral stands a sumptuous Gothic monument to honor Brittany's patron saint, Yves de Helori, born in 1253, a mile from the town in the manor of Kernartin--modern Minihy. On the nineteenth of every May Treguier marches in procession to Minihy to commemorate the good man who cleared the region of evil-doers, built a hospital beside his home that he might himself wait on the stricken, rose at midnight to chant matins, preached sometimes five sermons a day, and was the poor man's lawyer, so a popular hymn relates: "An advocate and not a thief, a thing almost beyond belief." The pardon of St. Yves, the Pardon of the Poor, is one of the five chief ones of Brittany. For centuries those who had pending law cases repaired to his primitive tomb. Thus Henry VII, Tudor, crossed from England the year before he won his kings.h.i.+p, to pet.i.tion the favor of the Breton saint who had supported only just causes in law. Universities selected him as their patron.

St. Yves was the son of a knight who went crusading with St. Louis. When sent, at fourteen, to Paris University, he sat with other young scholars on the rush-strewn floors to listen to the scholastics; even in his student days he visited the sick poor in the hospitals. Before thirty he entered the episcopal magistry, and henceforth his abilities were devoted to the relief of orphans and widows. This good man, after whom myriads of the sons of Brittany have been named, worked a.s.siduously, it is said, to collect funds for the building of the Gothic cathedral of Treguier.

In a street near the cloisters of St. Tugdual, Ernest Renan was born in 1828, his name deriving from an Irish anchorite of VI-century Armorica.

From his Breton father he derived his gravity, respect, faith, and imagination; from his mother's Gascon stock his irony, gayety, and serenity in skepticism, the result being, as he himself said, a tissue of contradictions. Brittany took his _Vie de Jesus_ as a personal affront. That a son of hers, once destined for the priesthood, should call her dear Christ of Calvary a "sorcerer," a "demi-impostor," a "_geant sombre_," "_un fin et joyeux moralist_," pierced her to the soul. When, beside the cathedral of Treguier, partisan politics raised a Renan statue (singularly inartistic), whose inscription was taken as an affront by every believing Christian, two million Bretons donated toward the erection of a monumental protest. The Calvary of Reparation stands at the entrance to Treguier, voicing the cry attributed to the dying Julian the Apostate, "Thou hast conquered, Galilaean!"

The son of Renan's daughter was that chosen soul, Ernest Psichari, who fell defending Belgium in August, 1914, a death considered by mystic Brittany to be an atonement. He has told of his spiritual anguish, "without defense against evil, without protection against sophistry, wandering without conviction in the poisoned gardens of vice, sick to the soul and ever pursued by obscure remorse, weighed down by the bitter derision of a life ruled by disordered sentiments and thoughts." In his _Appel des Armes_ and his _Voyage du Centurion_ he has traced his pilgrimage from materialism to Christian belief, taking "_contre son pere le parti de ses peres_." His grandfather, of Treguier, in Armorica, had written many years earlier: "The characteristic trait of the Breton race is idealism--the disinterested pursuit of a moral or intellectual aim. The Celt craves the Infinite. He thirsts for it, seeking it beyond all the prizes of the world."

A SUMMING UP

All our France is in our cathedrals.... Initiation into the beauty of Gothic is initiation into the truth of our race, of our sky, of our landscape.... Gothic art is the sensible, tangible soul of France; it is the religion of the French atmosphere. We are not incredulous; we are merely unfaithful. We have lost at the same time the sense of our race and of our religion. To regain force we must live again in the past, revert to first principles. Taste reigned of yore in our country: we must become French again.

--RODIN, _Les cathedrales de France_.

With many a gap, with many a lapse, we have followed the earlier stages of Gothic art in the land where it was born. We have seen how, from the efforts of the monks to cover their Romanesque naves with a permanent stone roof, was evolved the intersecting rib vault which was the basis of Gothic architecture, how for a short time churches used the Romanesque and Gothic systems simultaneously as in Morienval and Poissy, and for another short period the churches were Gothic in essentials while retaining a few traits of the earlier phase. By many the imperishable hour that produced Soissons' transept, the choir of St.

Remi, Notre Dame at Laon, and Notre Dame at Paris, is beyond all others.

When the national art expanded into its full flowering in the XIII century--an era as great in men and the making of history as in art--Gothic science, though ever seeking, ever reaching out, remained disciplined, even as the scholastic builders themselves were disciplined.

While eighty cathedrals in France were rising, and in the same hour some hundreds of lesser churches, the rulers of the nation were capable warriors, compilers of laws, and administrators, the builders were monarchs, crusading bishops, troubadour counts, cloistral ascetics, and arduous sinners. Serf, artisan, burgher, baron, and king built the cathedrals; field laborer, minstrel, maiden, and chatelaine were harnessed to the same cart to drag in the great stones. Little children cleared the church pavement of sand and cement in preparation for the "Day of Benediction" for their city, as the solemn blessing of their church was held to be by those G.o.d-fearing generations.

The new school of mediaeval archaeology, that during three generations has been interpreting the Gothic churches of France, is teaching us to read the stones with sympathy. "Symbol of Faith, the cathedral was also a symbol of Love," says M. emile Male. "All men labored there. The peasants offered their all, the work of their strong arms. They pulled carts and carried stones on their shoulders with the brave good will of the giant-saint, Christopher. The burgess gave his money, the baron his land, the artist his genius. During more than two centuries every vital force in France collaborated on the cathedrals. From that comes the puissant life emanating from these eternal monuments. The dead, too, were a.s.sociated with the living, for the cathedral was paved with tombstones, and the earlier generations, with hands joined in prayer, continued to wors.h.i.+p in their ancient church. Past and present were united in the same feeling of love. The cathedral was the very conscience, the very soul of the city."[385]

After five generations had reared so many and such magnificent churches, their energy, because it was human, pa.s.sed from plenitude into decline.

The death of St. Louis, in 1270, may be taken as the beginning of the change, though even before had been used various cut-and-dried Rayonnant features. Genius flagged when structural perfection was achieved. The divinely restless reaching out of art was stultified by geometric rule.

Graceful and stately as is many a XIV-century church, never in them do we find the unexpected entrancing touches of Apogee Gothic. Gothic was fast becoming an art made tongue-tied by authority.

As time went on profiles deteriorated, sharp prismatic molds succeeding to the virile torus, or molds fluid and vague. By the XV century capitals were omitted altogether. The sane marking of the horizontal line had become an offense to the eye. Without capitals the molds died away weakly in the piers. Flamboyant Gothic architecture exhibited all these traits, and, moreover, gave capricious rein to many a redundant detail, yet it was none the less a phase of art far more vigorous and satisfactory than the Rayonnant geometric period, its predecessor. The verve and abundance of Flamboyant Gothic was a rebirth. The inspiration of St. Jeanne d'Arc, the restored political unity, the increase of trade, the love of pageantry, all aided the art renaissance which was in progress before the advent of Italian ideas. No one can say that Gothic architecture ended in decrepitude who knows such masterpieces as the facades of Rouen and Beauvais, the towers at Bordeaux, Rodez, and Chartres, the baldaquin and choir screen of Albi, or statuary as ample in its simplicity as Riom's Virgin of the Bird and "the Saints" at Solesmes. And from end to end of France, as the XVI century opened, such work was in progress.

What, then, killed Gothic art? For it was slain with all this warm blood in its veins. Some say the return to pagan ideals dealt the death blow, the deserting of the celestial man-humble ideal for the terrestrial self-intoxicated pride of the Italian Renaissance: "The Renaissance is man seeking knowledge, happiness, and love, outside of Christianity." A Christian had knelt in prayer on a Gothic tomb, or reposed with serene confidence, awaiting the trumpet call of the archangel, a Book of Hours in his hand. On a Renaissance tomb the deceased reclined like a pagan at a feast. The Italian wars diverted from its natural channels the genius of the northern Latins (who were so strongly Celt and Frank), and in many cases the imported neo-cla.s.sicism was not that of Italy's supreme masters, but of the lesser artists, their successors.

Others have contended that the printing press and the Protestant Reformation--with its spirit of hostile criticism--proved fatal to the national art, since the very life of Gothic was legend, poetry, and dreams, and symbolism its inspiration. Doubt quickly drained the sources of life. "Its charm had been to retain the candor of childhood, the limpid book of young saints. It was an art whose faith discussed not--it sang."[386] It was an art happy and bold and free of restraint, save the restraint which its own right instinct for discipline imposed--co-ordinating the mult.i.tudinous into a symmetrical unity--an art unfettered in its truth telling, daring to sculpture king or bishop marching to h.e.l.l, yet giving no offense to authority by so doing.

Alas, one must acknowledge that the Church, so long the guardian of Gothic art, dealt a deadly blow at the sweet nave gayety of the Middle Ages. To reform Catholic Christendom there gathered at Trent a much-needed Council, impregnated with the critical spirit which Luther had unloosed. Pious churchmen had come to look askance on legends. They were ashamed of the simplicities which the XIII-century man was so certain pleased Our Lady, who accepted them with a friendly smile of comprehension of her fellow creatures. The good fathers at Trent regarded prudishly the spiritual pa.s.sion of the Canticle of Canticles flaming in cathedral windows; they thought it forwardness to carve mechanics' tools on altar stones. Such manifestations were excessive.

What would our critics of Wittemberg and Geneva say? The mystery plays, source of inspiration for the late-Gothic sculptors, now became suspect.

Deprived of popular life, the religious themes grew cold. When censured, the creative instinct withered. In 1563 (a year after the iconoclastic outrages in France) the Council of Trent, at its last session, complained that Gothic artists scandalized the faithful by their childish superst.i.tions. The Middle Ages were ended.

Cathedrals are not raised by critics or doubters. When France built her great churches, her faith was humble, her love a mounting flame. Her cathedrals were symbols of the Kingdom of G.o.d in her midst, the _pons saeculorum_ whereby man pa.s.sed beyond the bourne of his narrow life. They were solaces in his hours of misery, in his delinquencies; they stood for justice alike to serf and baron; they were the Sermon on the Mount made visible, the _Biblia pauperum_ wherein lettered and unlettered read the same lessons; they were the _Credo_ chanted by men who believed in Christ, Son of the Living G.o.d and Son of the Immaculate Virgin.

Nor should it be forgotten that the generations who raised the great cathedrals believed profoundly in themselves as G.o.d's specially loved instruments, his own selected knights-errant. "We are a race that exists to advance in the world the affairs of G.o.d," said the old Gallic patrician to Clovis the Frank, and soon a Frankish parchment ran, "_Vivat Christus qui diligit Francos_." When men feel like that they are compelled to express it grandly. When as pagans they feel it, the expression is a cataclysmic war of conquest. When they feel it as Christians, they build cathedrals. The generations whom St. Bernard purified, whom Suger trained, whom St. Louis inspired, founded their church on a firm rock, a living rock, lighted it unto a precious stone, prepared it as a bride adorned for her husband, and ever since sanct.i.ty has abided therein; kings have brought hither their honors and glory, and the glory and honor of the people have adorned the walls.

FRANCE

Because for once the sword broke in her hand, The words she spoke seemed perished for a s.p.a.ce; All wrong was brazen, and in every land The tyrants walked abroad with naked face.

The waters turned to blood, as rose the Star Of evil fate, denying all release.

The rulers smote the feeble, crying, "War!"

The usurers robbed the naked, crying, "Peace!"

And her own feet were caught in nets of gold, And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm, And little men climbed her high seats and sold Her honor to the vulture and the worm.

And she seemed broken and they thought her dead, The Over-Man, so brave against the weak.

Has your last word of sophistry been said, O cult of slaves? Then it is hers to speak.

Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes, As slow mists parted over Valmy fell, And once again her hands in high surprise Take hold upon the battlements of h.e.l.l.

--CECIL CHESTERTON (who died a soldier of the World War).

Regretfully one turns to other interests after spending years in trying to draw closer to the spirit of the Middle Ages--years that have coincided with the apocalyptic struggle that has desolated the cla.s.sic region of the national art, laying low, one after another, the churches of the first fugitive hour. And watching the giant battle, it has grown clearer how indissoluble is the solidarity of modern Frenchmen with their achieving grandfathers. A nation's bulwark is the unbroken solidarity of Past with Present. And only when _la race lumineuse_, compounded of Celt, Gaul, Latin, and Frank, denies that solidarity will it be conquered.

The peasant-soldier of 1914, starting for the front, who replied with grave dignity to his well-wisher, "Whichever way it turns, I am ready,"[387] would have met death like a paladin at Roncevaux, in 778, holding up his gauntlet to G.o.d, his suzerain, certain of the justice of Him who from the grave raised Blessed Lazarus, and Daniel saved from lions.

The young tradesman of 1915 who wrote from the trenches to one who loved him: "I look on this struggle less as a war against an enemy than as a crusade to reinstate G.o.d in his place in France," was true to his _race apostolique_ that sets the church bells ringing. At Clermont, in 1095, he pressed forward with the cry: "The cross! The cross! G.o.d wills it!" The priest-soldier offering sacrifice at an improvised altar within hearing of the guns, his spurs fretting his sacerdotal gown, is Turpin, guarding well the Cross and France.

The stricken lad, flung back, diseased from the prisons beyond the Rhine, weak, broken, in tatters, who cried with vibrant voice, as he and his comrades crossed the Swiss frontier, and friendly strangers gathered round: "_La tete haute! C'est nous la France!_" conquered Jerusalem with G.o.dfrey de Bouillon in the olden days, and related his prowess in a legend-medallion window at Chartres.

Above all, lives the soul of the Past in the generalissimo to whom a righteous destiny granted the freeing of his land from invaders. In churches shattered by sh.e.l.l fire he knelt daily--the weightiest fruit bending lowest--and he begged that the children of Christendom lift up their little white hands to heaven to pet.i.tion for his endurance. In 1249, with flas.h.i.+ng sword and the cry, "_Montjoie-St.-Denis_," he sprang into the surf beside his saint-king, following the oriflamme as it touched African soil. We have seen them alive again, the cathedral builders, the commune winners, the crusaders, dying with the farewell sigh, "_Ha! doulce France!_"

And thank G.o.d the flame is unquenchable, thank G.o.d that in the French race is the underlying sentiment for the Infinite, that peasant, artisan, student, priest, and chief feel the same humility and the same proper pride as those who built Soissons, the lovely stricken virgin; and Laon the intrepid, braving the hammer of Odin and Thor; Amiens the perfect, menaced and shaken but spared to us; and tragic, immortal Rheims, symbol of a people's resurrection. To herald the dawn is the mission of France, to look on her deeds as _Gesta Dei per Francos_.

"Hers is the hand that scatters the seed."

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Ruskin, _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_.

[2] Ruskin, _Sesame and Lilies_.

[3] Louis Gonse, _L'art gothique_ (Paris, Quantin, 1891); Camille Enlart, _Manuel d'archeologie francaise_ (Paris, A. Picard et Fils, 1902), 2 vols., 8vo; _ibid._, _Monuments religieux de l'architecture romane et de la transition dans la region picarde_ (Paris, A. Picard et Fils, 1895), folio; E. Lefevre-Pontalis, _L'architecture religieuse dans l'ancien diocese de Soissons au XIe et au XIIe siecle_ (Paris, Plon, 1894-97), 2 vols., folio; Arthur Kingsley Porter, _Medieval Architecture, Its Origins and Development_ (New York and London, 1909), 2 vols.; C. H. Moore, _Development and Character of Gothic Architecture_ (New York, Macmillan, 1904); Anthyme Saint-Paul, "La transition," in _Revue de l'art chretien_, 1895-96, vols. 44, 45, and 1912-13, pp. 206, 263; R. de Lasteyrie, _L'architecture religieux en France a l'epoque romane_ (Paris, 1912), chap. x; _ibid._, in _Revue de l'art chretien_, 1902, vol. 45, p. 213, his answer to Mr. Bilson, and Mr. Bilson's reply; Louis Regnier, "Les origines de l'architecture gothique," in _Mem. de la Soc. hist. et archeol. de Pontoise_, vol. 16; John Bilson, "The Beginnings of Gothic Architecture," in _Journal of the Royal Inst.i.tute of British Architects_, 3d series, 1898-99, vol. 6, pp. 289, 322, 345; p. 259 (answer to M. de Lasteyrie); vol. 9, p. 350; Mr. Bilson's papers were given in part in _Revue de l'art chretien_, 1901, vol. 44, pp. 369, 462; F. M. Simpson, _A History of Architectural Development_ (London, 1909).