Our Fathers Have Told Us Part 10

"And in the third place, I pray to Thee the Saviour, that Thou wouldst utterly cleanse away the closing gloom from the eyes of our souls, that we may know well who is to be held for G.o.d, and who for mortal. Amen."[51]

[Footnote 51: The original is written in Latin only. "Supplico tibi, Domine, Pater et Dux rationis nostrae, ut nostrae n.o.bilitatis recordemur, qua tu nos ornasti: et ut tu n.o.bis presto sis, ut iis qui per sese moventur; ut et a Corporis contagio, Brutorumque affectuum repurgemur, eosque superemus, atque regamus; et, sicut decet, pro instruments iis utamur. Deinde, ut n.o.bis adjuncto sis; ad accuratam rationis nostrae correctionem, et conjunctionem c.u.m iis qui vere sunt, per lucem veritatis. Et tertium, Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis animorum nostrorum caliginem prorsus abstergas; ut norimus bene, qui Deus, aut Mortalis habendus. Amen."]

22. And having prayed this prayer, or at least, read it with honest wis.h.i.+ng, (which if you cannot, there is no hope of your at present taking pleasure in any human work of large faculty, whether poetry, painting, or sculpture,) we may walk a little farther westwards down the nave, where, in the middle of it, but only a few yards from its end, two flat stones (the custode will show you them), one a little farther back than the other, are laid over the graves of the two great bishops, all whose strength of life was given, with the builder's, to raise this temple. Their actual graves have not been disturbed; but the tombs raised over them, once and again removed, are now set on your right and left hand as you look back to the apse, under the third arch between the nave and aisles.

23. Both are of bronze, cast at one flow--and with insuperable, in some respects inimitable, skill in the caster's art.

"Chefs-d'oeuvre de fonte,--le tout fondu d'un seul jet, et admirablement."[52] There are only two other such tombs left in France, those of the children of St. Louis. All others of their kind--and they were many in every great cathedral of France--were first torn from the graves they covered, to destroy the memory of France's dead; and then melted down into sous and centimes, to buy gunpowder and absinthe with for her living,--by the Progressive Mind of Civilization in her first blaze of enthusiasm and new light, from 1789 to 1800.

[Footnote 52: Viollet le Duc, vol. viii., p. 256. He adds: "L'une d'elles est comme art" (meaning general art of sculpture), "un monument du premier ordre;" but this is only partially true--also I find a note in M. Gilbert's account of them, p. 126: "Les deux doigts qui manquent, a la main droite de l'eveque Gaudefroi paraissent etre un defaut survenu a la fonte." See further, on these monuments, and those of St. Louis' children, Viollet le Duc, vol, ix., pp. 61, 62.]

The children's tombs, one on each side of the altar of St. Denis, are much smaller than these, though wrought more beautifully. These beside you are the _only two Bronze tombs of her Men of the great ages_, left in France!

24. And they are the tombs of the pastors of her people, who built for her the first perfect temple to her G.o.d. The Bishop Everard's is on your right, and has engraved round the border of it this inscription:[53]--

"Who fed the people, who laid the foundations of this Structure, to whose care the City was given, Here, in ever-breathing balm of fame, rests Everard.

A man compa.s.sionate to the afflicted, the widow's protector, the orphan's Guardian. Whom he could, he recreated with gifts.

To words of men, If gentle, a lamb; if violent, a lion; if proud, biting steel."

[Footnote 53: I steal again from the Abbe Roze the two inscriptions,--with his introductory notice of the evilly-inspired interference with them.

"La tombe d'Evrard de Fouilloy, (died 1222,) coulee en bronze en plein-relief, etait supportee des le principe, par des monstres engages dans une maconnerie remplissant le dessous du monument, pour indiquer que cet eveque avait pose les fondements de la Cathedrale. Un _architecte malheureus.e.m.e.nt inspire_ a ose arracher la maconnerie, pour qu'on ne vit plus la main du prelat fondateur, a la base de l'edifice.

"On lit, sur la bordure, l'inscription suivante en beaux caracteres du XIII^e siecle:

"'Qui populum pavit, qui fundam[=e]ta locavit Hui[=u]s structure, cuius fuit urbs data cure Hic redolens nardus, fama requiescit Ewardus, Vir pius ahflictis, vidvis tutela, relictis Custos, quos poterat recreabat munere; vbis, Mitib agnus erat, tumidis leo, lima supbis.'

"Geoffrey d'Eu (died 1237) est represente comme son predecesseur en habits episcopaux, mais le dessous du bronze supporte par des chimeres est evide, ce prelat ayant eleve l'edifice jusqu'aux voutes. Voici la legende gravee sur la bordure:

"'Ecce premunt humile Gaufridi membra cubile.

Seu minus aut simile n.o.bis parat omnibus ille; Quem laurus gemina decoraverat, in medicina Lege q[=u] divina, decuerunt cornua bina; Clare vir Augensis, quo sedes Ambianensis Crevit in imensis; in coelis auctus, Amen, sis.'

Tout est a etudier dans ces deux monuments; tout y est d'un haut interet, quant au dessin, a la sculpture, a l'agencement des ornements et des draperies."

In saying above that Geoffroy of Eu returned thanks in the Cathedral for its completion, I meant only that he had brought at least the choir into condition for service: "Jusqu'aux voutes" may or may not mean that the vaulting was closed.]

English, at its best, in Elizabethan days, is a n.o.bler language than ever Latin was; but its virtue is in colour and tone, not in what may be called metallic or crystalline condensation. And it is impossible to translate the last line of this inscription in as few English words. Note in it first that the Bishop's friends and enemies are spoken of as in word, not act; because the swelling, or mocking, or flattering, words of men are indeed what the meek of the earth must know how to bear and to welcome;--their deeds, it is for kings and knights to deal with: not but that the Bishops often took deeds in hand also; and in actual battle they were permitted to strike with the mace, but not with sword or lance--_i.e._, not to "shed blood"! For it was supposed that a man might always recover from a mace-blow; (which, however, would much depend on the bishop's mind who gave it). The battle of Bouvines, quite one of the most important in mediaeval history, was won against the English, and against odds besides of Germans, under their Emperor Otho, by two French bishops (Senlis and Bayeux)--who both generalled the French King's line, and led its charges. Our Earl of Salisbury surrendered to the Bishop of Bayeux in person.

25. Note farther, that quite one of the deadliest and most diabolic powers of evil words, or, rightly so called, blasphemy, has been developed in modern days in the effect of sometimes quite innocently meant and enjoyed 'slang.' There are two kinds of slang, in the essence of it: one 'Thieves' Latin'--the special language of rascals, used for concealment; the other, one might perhaps best call Louts' Latin!--the lowering or insulting words invented by vile persons to bring good things, in their own estimates, to their own level, or beneath it. The really worst power of this kind of blasphemy is in its often making it impossible to use plain words without a degrading or ludicrous attached sense:--thus I could not end my translation of this epitaph, as the old Latinist could, with the exactly accurate image "to the proud, a file"--because of the abuse of the word in lower English, retaining, however, quite shrewdly, the thirteenth-century idea. But the _exact_ force of the symbol here is in its allusion to jewellers' work, filing down facets. A proud man is often also a precious one: and may be made brighter in surface, and the purity of his inner self shown, by good _filing_.

26. Take it all in all, the perfect duty of a Bishop is expressed in these six Latin lines,--au mieux mieux--beginning with his pastoral office--_Feed_ my sheep--qui _pavit_ populum. And be a.s.sured, good reader, these ages never could have told you what a Bishop's, or any other man's, duty was, unless they had each man in his place both done it well--and seen it well done. The Bishop Geoffroy's tomb is on your left, and its inscription is:

"Behold, the limbs of G.o.dfrey press their lowly bed, Whether He is preparing for us all one less than, or like it.

Whom the twin laurels adorned, in medicine And in divine law, the dual crests became him.

Bright-s.h.i.+ning man of Eu, by whom the throne of Amiens Rose into immensity, be _thou_ increased in Heaven."

Amen.

And now at last--this reverence done and thanks paid--we will turn from these tombs, and go out at one of the western doors--and so see gradually rising above us the immensity of the three porches, and of the thoughts engraved in them.

27. What disgrace or change has come upon them, I will not tell you to-day--except only the 'immeasurable' loss of the great old foundation-steps, open, sweeping broad from side to side for all who came; unwalled, undivided, sunned all along by the westering day, lighted only by the moon and the stars at night; falling steep and many down the hillside--ceasing one by one, at last wide and few towards the level--and worn by pilgrim feet, for six hundred years. So I once saw them, and twice,--such things can now be never seen more.

Nor even of the west front itself, above, is much of the old masonry left: but in the porches nearly all,--except the actual outside facing, with its rose moulding, of which only a few flowers have been spared here and there.[54] But the sculpture has been carefully and honourably kept and restored to its place--pedestals or niches restored here and there with clay; or some which you see white and crude, re-carved entirely; nevertheless the impression you may receive from the whole is still what the builder meant; and I will tell you the order of its theology without further notices of its decay.

[Footnote 54: The horizontal lowest part of the moulding between the northern and central porch is old. Compare its roses with the new ones running round the arches above--and you will know what 'Restoration'

means.]

28. You will find it always well, in looking at any cathedral, to make your quarters of the compa.s.s sure, in the beginning; and to remember that, as you enter it, you are looking and advancing eastward; and that if it has three entrance porches, that on your left in entering is the northern, that on your right the southern. I shall endeavour in all my future writing of architecture, to observe the simple law of always calling the door of the north transept the north door; and that on the same side of the west front, the northern door, and so of their opposites. This will save, in the end, much printing and much confusion, for a Gothic cathedral has, almost always, these five great entrances; which may be easily, if at first attentively, recognized under the t.i.tles of the Central door (or porch), the Northern door, the Southern door, the North door, and the South door.

But when we use the terms right and left, we ought always to use them as in going _out_ of the cathedral, or walking down the nave,--the entire north side and aisles of the building being its right side, and the south, its left,--these terms being only used well and authoritatively, when they have reference either to the image of Christ in the apse or on the rood, or else to the central statue, whether of Christ, the Virgin, or a saint, in the west front. At Amiens, this central statue, on the 'trumeau' or supporting and dividing pillar of the central porch, is of Christ Immanuel,--G.o.d _with_ us. On His right hand and His left, occupying the entire walls of the central porch, are the apostles and the four greater prophets.

The twelve minor prophets stand side by side on the front, three on each of its great piers.[55]

[Footnote 55: See now the plan at the end of this chapter.]

The northern porch is dedicated to St. Firmin, the first Christian missionary to Amiens.

The southern porch, to the Virgin.

But these are both treated as withdrawn behind the great foundation of Christ and the Prophets; and their narrow recesses partly conceal their sculpture, until you enter them. What you have first to think of, and read, is the scripture of the great central porch, and the facade itself.

29. You have then in the centre of the front, the image of Christ Himself, receiving you: "I am the Way, the truth and the life." And the order of the attendant powers may be best understood by thinking of them as placed on Christ's right and left hand: this being also the order which the builder adopts in his Scripture history on the facade--so that it is to be read from left to right--_i.e._ from Christ's left to Christ's right, as _He_ sees it. Thus, therefore, following the order of the great statues: first in the central porch, there are six apostles on Christ's right hand, and six on His left. On His left hand, next to Him, Peter; then in receding order, Andrew, James, John, Matthew, Simon; on His right hand, next Him, Paul; and in receding order, James the Bishop, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas and Jude. These opposite ranks of the Apostles occupy what may be called the apse or curved bay of the porch, and form a nearly semicircular group, clearly visible as we approach.

But on the sides of the porch, outside the lines of apostles, and not seen clearly till we enter the porch, are the four greater prophets. On Christ's left, Isaiah and Jeremiah, on His right, Ezekiel and Daniel.

30. Then in front, along the whole facade--read in order from Christ's left to His right--come the series of the twelve minor prophets, three to each of the four piers of the temple, beginning at the south angle with Hosea, and ending with Malachi.

As you look full at the facade in front, the statues which fill the minor porches are either obscured in their narrower recesses or withdrawn behind each other so as to be unseen. And the entire ma.s.s of the front is seen, literally, as built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone. Literally _that_; for the receding Porch is a deep 'angulus,' and its mid-pillar is the 'Head of the Corner.'

Built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, that is to say of the Prophets who foretold _Christ_, and the Apostles who declared Him. Though Moses was an Apostle, of _G.o.d_, he is not here--though Elijah was a Prophet, of _G.o.d_, he is not here. The voice of the entire building is that of the Heaven at the Transfiguration, "This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him."

31. There is yet another and a greater prophet still, who, as it seems at first, is not here. Shall the people enter the gates of the temple, singing "Hosanna to the Son of _David_"; and see no image of His father, then?--Christ Himself declare, "I am the root and the offspring of David"; and yet the Root have no sign near it of its Earth?

Not so. David and his Son are together. David is the pedestal of the Christ.

32. We will begin our examination of the Temple front, therefore, with this its goodly pedestal stone. The statue of David is only two-thirds life-size, occupying the niche in front of the pedestal. He holds his sceptre in his right hand, the scroll in his left. King and Prophet, type of all Divinely right doing, and right claiming, and right proclaiming, kinghood, for ever.

The pedestal of which this statue forms the fronting or Western sculpture, is square, and on the two sides of it are two flowers in vases, on its north side the lily, and on its south the rose. And the entire monolith is one of the n.o.blest pieces of Christian sculpture in the world.

Above this pedestal comes a minor one, bearing in front of it a tendril of vine which completes the floral symbolism of the whole. The plant which I have called a lily is not the Fleur de Lys, nor the Madonna's, but an ideal one with bells like the crown Imperial (Shakespeare's type of 'lilies of all kinds'), representing the _mode of growth_ of the lily of the valley, which could not be sculptured so large in its literal form without appearing monstrous, and is exactly expressed in this tablet--as it fulfils, together with the rose and vine, its companions, the triple saying of Christ, "I am the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the Valley." "I am the true Vine."

33. On the side of the upper stone are supporters of a different character. Supporters,--not captives nor victims; the c.o.c.katrice and Adder. Representing the most active evil principles of the earth, as in their utmost malignity; still, Pedestals of Christ, and even in their deadly life, accomplis.h.i.+ng His final will.

Both creatures are represented accurately in the mediaeval traditional form, the c.o.c.katrice half dragon, half c.o.c.k; the deaf adder laying one ear against the ground and stopping the other with her tail.

The first represents the infidelity of Pride. The c.o.c.katrice--king serpent or highest serpent--saying that he _is_ G.o.d, and _will be_ G.o.d.

The second, the infidelity of Death. The adder (nieder or nether snake) saying that he _is_ mud, and _will be_ mud.