Cliff Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe Part 12

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: ROCAMADOUR. A cl.u.s.ter of chapels, some excavated in the rock. Zacchaeus is erroneously supposed to have lived and died in one of them. A famous place of pilgrimage.]

The town is built in the form of an amphitheatre on a chalk hill that commands the Dronne. The hill is precipitous in parts, and is everywhere so steep that the roofs of the houses are below the gardens of those above them, and the saying there is, "Mind that your cattle be not found in your neighbour's stable by tumbling through the roof." The castle occupied a height cut off from the town by a deep cleft, that has its sides pierced with caverns, and its store chambers and cellars are dug out of the rock. But the most curious feature of Aubeterre is the monolithic church of S. John beneath the castle. The doorway admitting into it is on the level of the street, and gives access to a charnel-house with what would be termed _arcosolia_ in the catacombs, on each side, and the floor is humpy with graves. This is 70 feet long by 16 feet wide. On the right hand it gives admission through a doorway cut in the rock to the church itself, consisting of a nave and side aisle divided from it by ma.s.sive monolithic piers, very much decayed at the top. It is lighted by three round-headed windows like a clerestory without gla.s.s. At the further end is an arch admitting to an apse, in the midst of which is an octagonal monolithic tomb of Renaissance style, with columns at the angles, and surmounted by the statue of Francois d'Esparbes de Lussac, Marshal of Aubeterre, and the much mutilated figure of his wife in Carrara marble.

A gallery excavated in the rock above the arch into the apse is continued the whole length of the aisle, and turns to admit into the seigneural gallery or pew high up over the entrance whence he and his family could hear Divine Service.

On the right-hand side of the nave opens a second charnel-house, called by the people "the Old Church," also with its _arcosolia_; there is also a door by which exit is obtained into a small cemetery overgrown with briars and thorns, and with the head-crosses reeling in all directions, and utterly neglected. For centuries not this yard only, nor the two charnel-houses but also the floor of the church, have served as the burial-place of the citizens of Aubeterre, and the floor is raised four feet above that of the apse though frequent interments.

The last head cross I noted within the church bore the date 1860.

The height of the church is said to be fifty feet. The castle above was sold about sixty years ago to a small tradesman of the town, who straightway pulled it down and disposed of the stones for building purposes, and out of the lead of the gutters, conduits, and windows made sufficient to pay the purchase-money.

Then he converted the site into a cabbage garden and vineyard. Not content with this he brought a stream of water in to nourish his cabbages. This leaks through and is rapidly disintegrating and ruining the church beneath, that was protected so long as the castle stood above it. Seven years ago the arched gallery in the aisle was perfect, now it has crumbled away. The piers were also intact, now they are corroded at the top. A stream pours down through the vault continuously by the monument of the Marshal. The church is cla.s.sed as a _monument historique_, nevertheless nothing was done to prevent the damage effected by the destruction of the covering castle, and nothing is done now to preserve it from utter disintegration.

In my opinion the apse was excavated to receive the monument, which consists of a ma.s.s of chalk in position, with a hole on one side to receive the coffins let down into the seigneural vault; and this could not have been there with a high altar behind it. In a lateral chapel is a hole in the vault, through which the ropes pa.s.sed to pull the bells that were hung in a tower above, but which has been destroyed.

[ILl.u.s.tRATION: AUBETERRE, CHARENTE. Mausoleum of Francois Espartes in the choir of the Subterranean Church.]

In 1450 Aubeterre was in the possession of the English, and they sold it to the Count of Perigord. When the Huguenot troubles began, the Lord of Aubeterre threw himself into the movement and appropriated the lands and revenues of the ecclesiastical foundations in the town. Francois d'Aubeterre was involved in the conspiracy of Amboise, and was sentenced to death, but pardoned. He deemed it expedient, however, to go to Geneva, where, as Brantome informs us, he turned b.u.t.ton-maker. In 1561 he was back again in Aubeterre, and converted the monolithic church into a preaching "temple," sweeping away all Catholic symbols, and it remains bare of them to this day. His brother, Guy Bonchard, Bishop of Perigueux, was also an ardent Calvinist, and used his position for introducing preachers of the sect into the churches.

Although disbelieving in Episcopacy, he did not see his way to surrendering the emoluments of his see. He was deposed in 1561, and Peter Fournier elected, whom the Huguenots murdered in his bed 14th July 1575.

In 1568 Jeanne d'Albret issued orders to the gangs of men she sent through the country to lay hold of the royal revenues, to sequestrate and appropriate all ecclesiastical property, to raise taxes to pay themselves, and to require all munic.i.p.alities to furnish from four to five soldiers apiece to replenish their corps.

Jeanne's power extended over Lower Navarre, Bearn, the land of Albret, Foix, Armagnac, and other great seigneuries. Through her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, she could rule and torture Perigord, the Bourbonais, and the Vendomois. She had good cause to be offended with the Pope, for in 1563, with incredible folly, he threatened her with deposition from her throne, a threat he could not possibly execute. By enrolling and sending forth over the south to ravage and confiscate, she was a second Pandora letting loose the hurricane, slaughter, fire, famine, and pestilence, leaving Hope locked up behind.

Aubeterre played a conspicuous part in the wars of religion, and the Catholics in vain essayed to take it. The seigneur could always draw from the bands of Calvinist soldiery to hold it, and it remained in their power till the peace of La Roch.e.l.le.

I might include Rocamadour in the Department of Lot among the interesting rock churches. It consists of a cl.u.s.ter of chapels clinging to the rock or dug out of it, and looking like a range of swallows'

nests plastered against the face of the cliff. The people of the place fondly hold that Zaccheus, who climbed up a sycamore tree to see Our Lord pa.s.s by, came into Quercy, and having a natural propensity for climbing, scrambled up the face of the precipice to a hole he perceived in it, and there spent the remainder of his days, and changed his name to Amator. No trace of such an identification occurs before 1427, when Pope Martin V. affirmed it in a bull, although in the local breviary there was no such identification. It is extremely doubtful whether any saint of the name of Amator settled here, the story concerning him is an appropriation from Lucca. [Footnote: _a.n.a.lecta Bollandiana_, T.

xxviii., pp. 57 _et seq_.]

But I will not describe this, one of the most remarkable sites in Europe, as I have done so already in my "Deserts of Southern France,"

and as of late years it has been visited by a good many English tourists, and the French railway stations exhibit highly coloured views of it, turning Rocamadour into a national show place.

At Lirac, in Gard, is La Sainte Baume, a small church or chapel, excavated out of the rock, 60 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 30 feet high. It is lighted by an aperture in the vault. Three other caves behind the choir are almost as large.

At Mimet, in Bouches-du-Rhone, is the church of Our Lady of the Angels, hewn out of limestone rock, with stalact.i.tes depending from the roof.

At Peyre, near Millau, in Tarn, is the church of S. Christophe, scooped out of the living rock, with above it an old crenellated bell tower.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SUBTERRANEAN CHURCH, AUBETERRE. Looking east. In the choir is the mausoleum. The floor of the church is raised four feet by it having been made the parish cemetery. The process of degradation of the pillars is noticeable at their heads.]

At Caudon, on the Dordogne, now in the parish of Domme, the old parish church is monolithic, entirely excavated in the rock, but with a structural bell-cot above it. As already mentioned, Caudon was a parish, but as owing to the devastations of the Companies, all the inhabitants had deserted it and fled to Spain, it was annexed to Domme.

What is curious is that before it had been carved out of the limestone as a church there had been cave-dwellers in or about it, that have left their traces in the sides of the church. The Marquis de Maleville, who has his chateau near, has put the church in thorough repair, and it is still occasionally used.

Natural caves have been employed as churches or places of wors.h.i.+p. Thus the Grotte des Fees, near Nimes, was used by the Calvinists for their religious a.s.semblies before 1567, when they obtained the mastery of the town, sacked the bishop's palace, and filled up the well with the Catholics, whom they precipitated into it, some dead and others half alive.

The Grotte de Jouclas, near Rocamadour, served the villagers of La Cave till the parish church was rebuilt. At Gurat, in Charente, the church of S. George is hollowed out of the rock; it dates from the tenth century, it is believed, and preceded the present parish church, which was erected in the eleventh century, and is Romanesque. In the valley of the Borreze, near Souillac (Lot), is a cave in which bones of the _ursus spel?us_ have been found. It is used as a chapel to Notre Dame de Ste. Esperance.

At Lanmeur, in Brittany, is the very early crypt of S. Melor, a Breton prince put to death about the year 544. The legend concerning him is rich in mythical particulars. His uncle, so as to incapacitate him from attaining the crown of Leon, cut off his right hand and left foot. The boy was then provided with a silver hand and a brazen foot. One day he was seen to use his silver hand in plucking filberts off a tree, whereupon his uncle had him murdered. The crypt is the most ancient monument of Christian architecture in Brittany. It measures 25 feet by 15 feet 6 inches, and is divided into a nave and side aisles by two ranges of columns hardly 4 feet high, sustaining depressed arches not rising above 3 feet 6 inches, and decorated with rudely sculptured trailing branches.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Section of the Dolmen Chapel of the Seven Sleepers near Plouaret.]

A still more curious subterranean chapel is near Plouaret, in Cotes-du- Nord. It is, in fact, a prehistoric dolmen under a tumulus, on top of which a chapel was erected in 1702-4. The descent into the crypt is by a flight of steps. The primitive monument consisted of two huge capstones of granite supported by four or five vertically planted uprights, but one, if not two of the latter have been removed. At the east end is an altar to the Seven Sleepers, and the comical dolls representing them stand in a niche above the altar.

In the north-west of Spain, at Cangas-de-Ones, near Oviedo, is a little church of probably the tenth or eleventh century, built on top of a cairn that covers a dolmen. This latter consists of a circular chamber into which leads a gallery composed of fifteen upright slabs, covered by four others. The dolmen served as a crypt to the church, and from it have been recovered objects in stone and copper of a prehistoric period. A writer in the seventeenth century says that in his time devotees regarded the dolmen as the tomb of a saint, and scrabbled up the soil, and carried it away as a remedy against sundry maladies.

[Footnote: _Revue mensuelle de l'ecole d'Anthropologie_, Paris, 1897.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plan of the Dolmen Chapel near Plouaret.]

The Bretons have a ballad, _Gwerz_, concerning the former monument. It is a miraculous structure dating from the Creation of the World: "Who will doubt that it was built by the hand of the Almighty?

You ask me when and how it was constructed. I reply that I believe that when the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all were created, then was this also made."

Although the dolmen is no longer underground, I must refer to that of Confolens near S. Germain-sur-Vienne, because it was originally under a tumulus. It is a dolmen, of which only the cover, a huge ma.s.s of granite remains intact, in an island of the Vienne. Underneath the slab are sculptured a stone axe with handle, and one without, also a cross.

The capstone rests on four pillars of the twelfth century. Mr. Ferguson erroneously claimed the dolmen as evidence that rude stone monuments continued to be erected till late in the Middle Ages. But, in fact, the pillars are not of equal length, their capitals are not in line, nor are their bases. What is obvious is that the rude stone supports were removed one by one, and the Gothic pillars inserted in their place were cut exactly to the length required. Thus altered, the dolmen served as a baldachin or canopy over the stone Christian altar that is still in place beneath it. About this monument a chapel had been erected with apse to the east, measuring 36 feet by 15 feet. This has been destroyed, but the foundations remained till recently. The cross on the capstone was cut when the prehistoric monument was converted to use by Christians. To descend to the floor of the chapel a flight of steps had been constructed. The chapel was dedicated to S. Mary Magdalen.

In Egypt, in the Levant, cave-churches are common. The chapel of Agios Niketos, in Crete, is now merely a smoke begrimed grotto beneath a huge ma.s.s of rock on the mountain side. The roof is elaborately ornamented with paintings representing incidents in the Gospel story, and the legend of S. Nicolas. Though it is no longer employed as a church, an event that is said to have happened some centuries ago invests it with special regard by the natives. The church was crowded with wors.h.i.+ppers on the eve of the feast of the patron, when the fires which the villagers who had a.s.sembled there had lighted near the entrance, where they were bivouacking for the night, attracted the attention of a Barbary corsair, then cruising off the island, and guided him to the spot un.o.bserved. Suddenly and unexpectedly he and his crew, having stolen up the hill, burst upon the crowd of frightened Cretans. The Corsairs thereupon built up the entrance, and waited for day, the better to secure their captives for embarkation. But happily there was another exit from the cavern behind the altar, and by this the whole congregation escaped into another cave, and thence by a pa.s.sage to a further opening, through which they stole out un.o.bserved by the pirates.

The rock-hewn church of Dayn Aboo Hannes, "the convent of Father John,"

in Egypt, near Antinoe, has its walls painted with subjects from the New Testament; the church is thought to date back to the time of Constantine.

The pa.s.sion for a.s.sociating grottoes with sacred themes is shown in the location of the site of the Nativity at Bethlehem. There is nothing in the Gospel to lead us to suppose that the event took place in a cave, though it is not improbable that it did so. The scene of the Annunciation was also a rock-hewn cave, now occupied by a half- underground church, out of which flows the Virgin's Fountain.

In Gethsemane, "the chapel of the Tomb of the Virgin, over the traditional spot where the Mother of our Lord was buried by the Apostles, is mostly underground. Three flights of steps lead down to the s.p.a.ce in front of it, so that nothing is seen above ground but the porch. But even after you have gone down the three flights of steps you are only at the entrance to the church, amidst marble pillars, flying b.u.t.tresses, and pointed arches. Forty-seven additional marble steps, descending in a broad flight nineteen feet wide, lead down a further depth of thirty-five feet, and here you are surrounded by monkish sites and sacred spots. The whole place is, in fact, two distinct natural caves, enlarged and turned to their present uses with infinite care.

Far below the ground you find a church thirty-one yards long and nearly seven wide, lighted by many lamps, and are shown the tomb of the father and mother of the Virgin, and that of Joseph and the Virgin herself.

And as if this were not enough, a long subterranean gallery leads down six steps more to a cave eighteen yards long, half as broad, and about twelve feet wide, which you are told is the Cavern of the Agony."

[Footnote: Geikie (C.), "The Holy Land and the Bible," Lond. 1887, ii.p.8.]

Stanley says: [Footnote: "Sinai and Palestine," Lond. 1856, p.150.]

"The moment that the religion of Palestine fell into the hands of Europeans, it is hardly too much to say that as far as sacred traditions are concerned, it became 'a religion of caves,' of those very caves which in earlier times had been unhallowed by any religious influence whatever. Wherever a sacred a.s.sociation had to be fixed, a cave was immediately selected or found as its home. First in antiquity is the grotto of Bethlehem, already in the second century regarded by popular belief as the scene of the Nativity. Next comes the grotto on Mount Olivet, selected as the scene of our Lord's last conversation before the Ascension. These two caves, Eusebius emphatically a.s.serts, were the first seats of the wors.h.i.+p established by the Empress Helena, to which was shortly afterwards added a third--the sacred cave of the Sepulchre. To these were rapidly added the cave of the Invention of the Cross, the cave of the Annunciation at Nazareth, the cave of the Agony at Gethsemane, the cave of the Baptism in the Wilderness of S. John, the cave of the Shepherds of Bethlehem. And then again, partly perhaps the cause, partly the effect of the consecration of grottoes, began the caves of the hermits. There were the cave of S. Pelagia on Mount Olivet, the caves of S. Jerome, S. Paula, and S. Eustochium at Bethlehem, the cave of S. Saba in the ravine of Kedron, the remarkable cells hewn or found in the precipices of the Quarrantania or Mount of the Temptation above Jericho. In some few instances this selection of grottoes would coincide with the events thus intended to be perpetuated, as for example, the hiding-place of the prophets on Carmel, and the sepulchres of the patriarchs and of Our Lord. But in most instances the choice is made without the sanction, in some instances in defiance of, the sacred narrative."

It is questionable whether Dean Stanley is right in attributing the identification of caves with sacred sites to Europeans, it is probable enough that the local Christians had already fixed upon some if not all of them. After the pilgrims or the Crusaders had come in their thousands and visited the holy sites, they returned to their native lands deeply impressed with the a.s.sociation of caves with everything that was held sacred, and this, added to the dormant sense of reverence for places underground consecrated to holy purposes that had come to them from their parents, must have tended to the multiplication of subterranean churches.

In some venerated caves and in certain crypts are springs of water that are held to be invested with miraculous properties. The crypts of S.

Peter in the Vatican, S. Ponziana and S. Alessandro, have such flowing springs. In the crypt of the church of Gorlitz is a well, and from that of the cathedral of Paderborn issues one of the sources of the river Pader. The Kilian spring rises in the crypt of the New Minster in Wurzburg. Out of the cave of the monastery of Brantome, to be described in another chapter, streams a magnificent source. Most of the water is employed for the town and for the washerwomen, but one little rill from it is conducted to an ornate fountain, that bears the name of S.

Sicarius (Little Cut-throat), one of the Innocents of Bethlehem slain by order of Herod. It is explained that by some means or other Charlemagne obtained his bones, but how the infant of a Hebrew mother acquired a Latin name has not been attempted to be explained.

CHAPTER VIII

ROCK HERMITAGES

There is an account in the _Times'_ Correspondent's record of Colonel Younghusband's expedition to Lhasa that when read haunts the imagination. It is the description made by Mr. Landon of a Buddhist monastery, Nyen-de-kyl-Buk, where the inmates enter as little children and grow up with the prospect of being literally immured in a cave from which the light of day is excluded as well as the society of their fellow-men, there to spend the rest of their life till they rot. Horace may say:

Jubeas miserum esse, libenter Quatenus id facit;

but few Christians can feel this towards another human being, though of another race, religion, and under another clime.