Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France Part 7

In the comfortable civilisation of France, the stage-coach usually begins where the railroad ends; and however remote a destination or tedious a journey, an ultimate and safe arrival is reasonably certain.

This was the reflection which cheered the traveller when he began to search for Senez, an ancient city of the Romans which was christianised in the early centuries and enjoyed the rank of Bishopric until the Revolution of '89. In spite of this dignified rank and the tenacity of an ancient foundation, it lies so far from modern ken that even worthies who live fifty miles away could only say that "Senez is not much of a place, but it doubtless may be found ten--perhaps fifteen--or even twenty kilometres behind the railroad."

"If Monsieur alighted at Barreme, probably the mail for Senez would be left there too. And where letters go, some man or beast must carry them, and one could always follow."

With these vague directions, the traveller set gaily out for Barreme, where a greater than he had spent one bleak March night on the anxious journey from Elba to Paris. The town shows no trace of Napoleon's hurried visit. It looks a mere sleepy hamlet, and when the traveller left the train he had already decided to push his journey onward.

"To Senez?" A man stepped up in answer to his inquiry. "Certainly there was a way to get there, the mail-coach started in an hour. And a hotel?

A very good hotel--not Parisian perhaps, but hot food, a bottle of good wine, and a clean bed. Could one desire more on this earth?"

The traveller thought not, and left the station--to stand transfixed before the most melancholy conveyance that ever bore the high-sounding name of "mail-coach." A little wagon in whose interior six thin persons might have crowded, old windows shaking in their frames, the remains of a coat of yellow paint, and in front a seat which a projecting bit of roof protected from the sun,--this was the mail-coach of Senez, drawn by a dejected, small brown mule, ragged with age, and a gaunt white horse who towered above him. To complete the equipage, this melancholy pair were hitched with ropes.

In due course of time the driver came, hooked an ancient tin box marked "Lettres" to the dash-board, threw in a sacking-bag, and cap in hand, invited the traveller to mount with him "where there was air." The long whip cracked authoritatively, the postilion, a beautiful black dog, jumped to the roof, and the mail-coach of Senez, with rattle and creak, started on its scheduled run.

"Houp-la, thou bag of lazy bones done up in a brown skin! Ho-la, thou whited sepulchre, thinkest thou I will get out and carry thee? Take this and that."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE MAIL-COACH OF SENEZ."]

On either side the whip hit the road ferociously, but the old beasts of burden shook their philosophic heads and slowly jogged on, knowing well they would not be touched.

The hot sun of Provence, which "drinks a river as man drinks a gla.s.s of wine," shone on the long, white "route nationale" that stretched out in well-kept monotony through a valley which might well have been named "Desolation." On either hand rose mountains that were great ma.s.ses of bare, seared rocks, showing the ravages of forgotten glaciers; the soil that once covered them lay at their feet. Scarcely a shrub pushed out from the crevices, and even along the road, the few thin poplars found the poorest of nourishment.

Crossing a small bridge, there came into view an ancient village, a mere handful of cl.u.s.tered wooden roofs, irregular, broken, and decayed.

"It was a city in the days when we were Romans," said the Courier, "and they say that there are treasures underneath our soil. But who can tell when people talk so much? And certainly two sous earned above ground buy hotter soup than one can gain in many a search for twenty francs below."

He whipped up for a suitable and striking entry into town, turned into a lane, and with much show of difficulty in reining up, stood before the "hotel."

The traveller, having descended, entered a room that might have been the subject of a quaint Dutch canvas. He saw a low ceiling, smoky walls, long rows of benches, a sanded floor, and pine-board tables that stretched back to an open door; and through the open door, the pot swinging above the embers of the kitchen fire. The mistress of the inn, a strong white-haired woman of seventy, came hurrying in to greet her guest. "It was late," she said, and quickly put a basin full of water, a new piece of soap, and a fresh towel on a chair near the kitchen door; and as the traveller prepared himself for dinner he heard the crackling of fresh boughs upon the fire and the cheerful singing of the pot.

Little lamps were lighted, and when he came to his table's end, he found good country wine and a steaming cabbage-soup. Others came in to dine and smoke and talk, and later from his bed-room window, he saw their ghostly figures moving up and down the unlighted streets and heard them say good-night. The inn-door was noisily and safely barred, and when the retreating footsteps and the voices had died away, the quiet of the dark remained unbroken until a watchman, with flickering lantern, pa.s.sed, and cried aloud "All's well."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE OPEN SQUARE."--SENEZ.]

Next morning the sun shone brightly on Senez, and the traveller hurried to the open square. A horse, carrying a farmer's boy, meandered slowly by, a chicken picked here and there, and water trickled slowly from the tiny faucet of the village fountain.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE PALACE OF ITS PRELATES."--SENEZ.]

In this quiet spot, near the lonely desolation of the hills, is the Cathedral. The Palace of its prelates, which is opposite, is now a farm-house where hay-ricks stand in the front yard, and windows have been walled up because Provencal winds are cold and gla.s.s is dear.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL.--SENEZ.]

Looking at this residence, one would think that the last Bishops of Senez were insignificant priests, steeped in country wine and country stagnancy. But such a supposition is very far from true. For we know that in the XVIII century, Jean Soannen, Bishop of the city, was called before a Council at Embrun to answer a charge of resistance to the far-famed Bull "Unigenitus," and so strong were his convictions and so great his loyalty to his conscience, that he resisted the Council as well as the Bull, and was deprived of his See as a Jansenist and recalcitrant, and exiled to the Abbey of La-Chaise-Dieu. In quiet Senez there must always have been time for reflection, and one can imagine the bitter struggle of this brave man as he walked the rooms of the Palace, as he crossed and re-crossed the small square to the Cathedral. One can imagine his wrestling with G.o.d and his conscience every time that he celebrated a Ma.s.s for the people before the Cathedral's altar. One can understand the bitter fight between two high ideals, irreconcilable in his life,--that of work in G.o.d's vineyard or of doctrinal purity as he saw it. He had to choose between them, this Bishop of Senez, and when he left the town to answer the summons of the Council at Embrun, his heart must have been sore within him, he must have said farewell to many things. Few decisions can be more serious than the renunciation of family and home for the service of G.o.d, few more solemn than the struggles between the flesh and the spirit; but no more pathetic picture can exist than that sad figure of Jean Soannen; for he had renounced family and the world, and for the sake of "accepted truth" which was false to him, endured helpless, solitary insignificance under the espionage of suspicious and unfriendly monks. The traveller remembered his tomb, that tomb in a small chapel near the foot of the stair-case in the famous Abbey far-away, and sighing, hoped that in his mournful exile, the Bishop may have realised that "they also serve who only stand and wait."

The Bull Unigenitus, which caused his downfall, is believed to have caused, during the last years of Louis XIV's bigotry, the persecution of thirty thousand respectable, intelligent, and orderly Frenchmen. De Noailles, several Bishops, and the Parliament of Paris refused to accept it, though they stopped short of open rebellion, and even Fenelon "submitted" rather than acceded to it. This famous and vexatious doc.u.ment was an unhappy emanation of Pope Clement XIII. Hard pressed by his faithful supporters, the Jesuits, he promulgated it in 1713, and it condemns with great explicitness one hundred and one propositions which are taken from Quesnel's Jansenistic "Reflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament." The Jesuits held the Jansenists in a horror which the Jansenists reciprocated; the Pope owed almost too heavy a debt of grat.i.tude to the order of Saint Ignatius and was constrained to repay.

But the Bull, instead of procuring peace, brought the greatest affliction and desolation of mind to His Holiness, and when later, the French envoy asked him why he had condemned such an odd number of propositions, the Pope seizing his arm burst into tears.

"Ah Monsieur Amelot! Monsieur Amelot! What would you have me do? I strove hard to curtail the list, but Pere Le Tellier"--Louis XIV's last confessor and a devoted Jesuit--"had pledged his word to the King that the book contained more than one hundred errors, and with his foot on my neck, he compelled me to prove him right. I condemned only one more!"

The Cathedral of Senez is an humble village church where frank and simple poverty exists with the remains of ancient splendour. It is small, as are all churches of its style, and although it does not lack a homely dignity, it is a modest work of XII century Romanesque, and the sonorous t.i.tle of its consecration in 1242, "the a.s.sumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary," suggests an impressiveness which the Cathedral never had.

Two heavy b.u.t.tresses that support the facade wall are reminiscent of the more majestic Notre-Dame-du-Bourg of Digne, and on them rest the ends of a pointed gable-roof. Between these b.u.t.tresses, the wall is pierced by a long and graceful round-arched window, and below the window is the single, pointed portal whose columns are gone and whose delicate foliated carvings and mouldings are sadly worn away. A sun-dial painted on the wall tells the time of day, and at the gable's sharpest point a saucy little angel with a trumpet in his mouth blows with the wind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL.--SENEZ.]

Entering the little portal, the traveller saw the poor wooden benches of the congregation ma.s.sed together, and beyond them, the stalls of long-departed Canons. In front of these old stalls, stood the church's latest luxury, a melodeon, and above them hung the tapestries of its richer past. Tapestries also beautify the choir-walls, and on either side, are the narrow transepts and the apses of a good old style. There are also poor and tawdry altars which stand in strange, pitiable contrast with the old walls and the fine tunnel vaulting, the dignified architecture of the past.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TAPESTRIES BEAUTIFY THE CHOIR WALLS."--SENEZ.]

Leaving the interior, where a solitary peasant knelt in prayer, the traveller saw side-walls bare as the mountains round about, the squat tower that rises just above the roof, and coming to the apse-end he found the presbytery garden. From the garden, beyond the fallen gate, he saw the church as the Cure saw it, the three round apses with their little columns, the smaller decorative arches of the cornices, the pointed roof, and between branches full of apple blossoms, the softened lines of the low square tower. Here, trespa.s.sing, the Cure found him.

And after they had walked about the town, and talked the whole day long of the great world which lay so far beyond, they went into the little garden as the sun was going down, and fell to musing over coffee cups.

The priest was first to speak.

"Perhaps, buried under those old church walls, lie proofs of our early history, the stones of some old Temple, or statues of its G.o.ds; for we were once Sanitium, a Roman city in a country of six Roman roads.

Perhaps all around us were great monuments of pagan wealth, a Mausoleum near these bare old rocks like that which stands in loneliness near Saint-Remy, Villas, Baths, or Triumphal Arches."

The keen eyes softened, as he continued in gentle irony, "Down in this little valley of the a.s.se de Blieux, our town seems far away from any scene in which the great ones of earth took part. Although I know that it is true, it often seems to me a legend that the gay and gallant Francis I, rus.h.i.+ng to a mad war, stopped on his way to injure us; and that four hundred years ago a band of Huguenots raved around our old Cathedral, and tried to pull it to the ground."

"And do you think it can be true," the traveller asked, "that Bishops held mysterious prisoners in that tower for most dreary lengths of time?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BETWEEN BRANCHES FULL OF APPLE-BLOSSOMS, THE CHURCH AS THE CURe SAW IT."--SENEZ.]

The Cure smiled, and shook his white head. "That is a story which the peasants tell,--an old tradition of the land. It may be true, since priests are mortal men and doubtless dealt with sinners." He smiled indulgently. "Through the many years I have been here, I have often wondered about all these things, but it is seldom I can speak my thoughts. Sometimes when I am here alone, I lose the sense of present things and seem to see the phantoms of the past. Then the dusk comes on, as it is coming now; the night blots Senez from my sight as fate has blotted out its record from history,--and I realise that our human memory is in vain."

[Sidenote: Aix.]

The old Cathedral of Saint-Sauveur at Aix is not one of those rarely beautiful churches where a complete and restful h.o.m.ogeneity delights the eye, nor is it a church of crude and shocking transitions. It is rather a well-arranged museum of ecclesiastical architecture, where, in sufficient historical continuity and harmony, many Provencal conceptions are found, and the evolution of Provencal architecture may be very completely followed. As in all collections, the beauty of Saint-Sauveur is not in a general view or in any glance into a long perspective, but in a close and loving study of the details it encloses; and so charming, so really beautiful are many of the diverse little treasures of Aix, that such study is better repaid here than in any other Provencal Cathedral. For this is one of the largest Cathedrals of the province, and the buildings which form the ecclesiastical group are most complete. With its baptistery, Cloister, church, and arch-episcopal Palace, it is not only of many epochs and styles, but of many historical uncertainties, and the hypotheses of its construction are enough to daze the most hardened archaeologist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE SOUTH AISLE."--AIX.]

The oldest part of the Cathedral is the baptistery, and the date of its origin is unknown. Much of its character was lost in a restoration of the XVII century, but its old round form, the magnificent Roman columns of granite and green marble said to have been part of the Temple to Apollo, give it an atmosphere of dignity and an ancient charm that even the XVII century--so potent in architectural evil--was unable to destroy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROMANESQUE PORTAL.]

In 1060, after the destructive vicissitudes of the early centuries, Archbishop Rostaing d'Hyeres issued a pastoral letter appealing to the Faithful to aid him in the re-building of a new Cathedral; and it may be reasonably supposed that the nave which is at present the south aisle, the baptistery, and the Cloisters were the buildings that were dedicated less than fifty years later. They are the only portions of the church which can be ascribed to so early a period, and with the low door of entrance, the single nave and the adjoining cloister-walk, they const.i.tute the usual plan of XI century Romanesque. Considering this as the early church, in almost original form, it will be seen that the portal is a very interesting example of the Provencal use not only of Roman suggestion, but of the actual fragments of Roman art which had escaped the invader; that the south aisle, in itself a completed interior, bears a close resemblance to Avignon; and that the Cloister, although now very worn and even defaced, must have been one of the quaintest and most delicate, as it is one of the tiniest, in Provence.

Three sides of its arcades support plain buildings of a later date; the fourth stands free, as if in ruin. Little coupled columns, some slenderly circular, some twisted, and some polygonal, rest on a low wall; piers, very finely and differently carved, are at each of the arcade angles; the little capitals of the columns were once beautifully cut, and even the surfaces of the arches have small foliated disks and rosettes and are finished in roll and hollow. Unfortunately, a very large part of this detail-work is so defaced that its subjects are barely suggested, some are so eaten away that they are as desolate of beauty as the barren little quadrangle; and the whole Cloister seems to have reached the brink of that pathetic old age which Shakespeare has described, and that another step in the march of time would leave it "sans everything."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLOISTER.--AIX.]

About two hundred years later, in 1285, the Archbishop of Aix found the Cathedral too unpretending for the rank and dignity of the See, and he began the Gothic additions. Like many another prelate his ambitions were larger than his means; and the history of Saint-Sauveur from the XIII to the XIX century, is that oft-told tale of new indulgences offered for new contributions, halts and delays in construction, emptied treasuries, and again, appeals and fresh efforts. The beginnings of the enlarged Cathedral were architecturally abrupt. The old nave, becoming the south aisle, was connected with the new by two small openings; it retained much of its separateness and in spite of added chapels much actual isolation. The Gothic nave, the north aisle and its many chapels, the apse, and the transepts, whose building and re-construction stretched over the long period between the XIII and XVII centuries, are comparatively regular, uniform, and uninteresting. The most ambitious view is that of the central nave, whose whole length is so little broken by entrances to the side aisles, that it seems almost solidly enclosed by its ma.s.sive walls. Here in Gothic bays, are found those rounded, longitudinal arches which belong to the Romanesque and to some structure whose ident.i.ty is buried in the mysterious past. The choir, with its long, narrow windows, and cl.u.s.ters of columnettes, is very pleasing, and its seven sides, foreign to Provence, remind one of Italian and Spanish constructive forms and take one's memory on strange jaunts, to the far-away Frari in Venice and the colder Abbey of London. From the choir of Saint-Sauveur two chapels open; and one of them is a charming bit of architecture, a replica in miniature of the mother-apse itself. The paintings of this mother-apse are neutral, its gla.s.s has no claim to sumptuousness, and the stalls are very unpretending; but above them hang tapestries ascribed to Matsys, splendid hangings of the Flemish school that were once in old Saint Paul's.

With these beautiful details the rich treasure-trove of the interior is exhausted, and one pa.s.ses out to study the details of the exterior. The Cathedral's single tower, which rises behind the facade line, was one of the parts that was longest neglected,--perhaps because a tower is less essential to the ritual than any other portion of an ecclesiastical building. Begun in 1323, the work dragged along with many periods of absolute idleness, until 1880, when a bal.u.s.trade with pinnacles at each angle was added to the upper octagonal stage, and the building of the tower was thus ended. The octagon with its narrow windows rests on a plain, square base that is ma.s.sively b.u.t.tressed. It is a pleasant, rather than a remarkable tower, and one's eye wanders to the more beautiful facade. Here, encased by severely plain supports, is one of the most charming portals of Provencal Gothic. Decorated b.u.t.tresses stand on either side of a large, shallow recess which has a high and pointed arch, and in the centre, a slim pier divides the entrance-way into two parts, pre-figuring the final division of the Just and the Unjust. A mult.i.tude of finely sculptured statues were formerly hidden in niches, under graceful canopies, and in the hundred little nooks and corners which lurk about true Gothic portals. Standing Apostles and seated Patriarchs, baby cherubs peering out, and the more dramatic composition of the tympanum--the Transfiguration,--all lent a dignity and wealth to Saint-Sauveur. Unfortunately many of these sculptures were torn from their crannies in the great Revolution; and it is only a few of the heavenly hosts,--the gracious Madonna, Saint Michael, and the Prophets,--that remain as types of those that were so wantonly destroyed. The low, empty gables that sheltered lost statues, their slender, tapering turrets, and the delicate outer curve of the arch, are of admirable, if not imposing, composition. The portal's wooden doors, protected by plain casings, abound in carvings partly Renaissance, partly Gothic. The Sibyls and Prophets stand under canopies, surrounded by foliage, fruits, and flowers, or isolated from each other by little b.u.t.tresses or pilasters. This Gothic portal quite outs.h.i.+nes, in its graceful elaboration, the smaller door which stands near it, in the simpler and not less potent charm of the Romanesque. And side by side, these portals offer a curiously interesting comparison of the essential differences and qualities of their two great styles. If the Romanesque of Saint-Sauveur is far surpa.s.sed at Arles and Digne and Sisteron, nowhere in Provence has Gothic richer details; and if the n.o.blest of Provencal creations must be sought in other little cities, the lover of architectural comparisons, of details, of the many lesser things rather than of the harmony of a single whole, will linger long in Aix.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CATHEDRAL.--AIX.]

The old city itself shows scarcely a trace of the many historic dramas of which it has been the scene,--the lowering tragedy of the Vaudois time,--the bright, gay comedy of good king Rene's Court,--the shorter scenes of Charles V's occupation,--the Parliament's struggle with Richelieu and Mazarin,--the day of the fiery Mirabeau,--the grim melodrama of the Revolution,--all have pa.s.sed, and time has destroyed their monuments almost as completely as the Saracens destroyed those of the earlier Roman days. Only a few, unformed fragments of the great Temple of Apollo remain in the walls of Saint-Sauveur. The earliest Cathedral, Sainte-Marie-de-la-Seds, has entirely disappeared, the old thermal springs are enclosed by modern buildings, and only the statue of "the good King Rene" and the Church of the Knights of Malta give to Aix a faint atmosphere of its past distinction. Who would dream that here were the homes of the elegant and lettered courtiers of King Rene's brilliant capital, who would think that this town was the earliest Roman settlement in Gaul, the Aquae s.e.xtiae of Baths, Temples, Theatres, and great wealth? Aix is a stately town, a provincial capital which Balzac might well have described--with old, quiet streets that are a little dreary, with a fine avenue shaded by great trees in whose shadows a few fountains trickle, with lines of little stages that come each day from the country,--a city whose life is as far in spirit from the near-by modernity of Ma.r.s.eilles as it is from that of Paris, as quaintly and delightfully provincial as that other little Provencal city, the Tarascon of King Rene and of Tartarin.